Author: Jason Wright

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What Did I Miss?

I missed you today.
[Same Space / No Connection]
My fault, I know…

I hope my lurking
didn’t make you uncomfortable.

I hope tonight will give you
what my presence lacks.

Hope you can help w/ my phone and SNAP
without frustration or exhaustion
because I’m terrified of failure.

More than two months without therapy
and I continue to struggle
with simple exercises of balance and breath.

I’m losing Jennifer
and I could lose myself if I’m not careful.

Need to connect with you –
with him –
with myself more often…

                     Honest
                     Lust
       Terrified of: Lost
                     in
                     Lies

The frightening power when you
stroke the keys –

to make me whimper, weep,
make me cum
with threatened / promised action!

I’m addicted.

Junkie grovelling for scraps
of a childhood seduction.

Breathe my dreams to life.

Because Honest
Lust
Lifted
in
Longing

            may free me from this horrible freedom.
            allow me to smile at my expensive joke.
            to strip lust naked & make it my slave
            until tricks rob me of your magic
            and kneel me down
            to worship all that I missed today.

Written by Jason Wright
October 24, 2017

For Aaron

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Romeo Troye: The Company of Trains

You feel younger
walking hand in hand
with new Christmas decorations
and ice cream fizzle;
turn the music up
but can’t block him out:
I might as well be at home…
this isn’t bad.

Keep it going.
(((((((SPIN)))))))
And out.

She is smiling
through raindrop curtain of music
like drug song.

“Drugs are quick.”

He is gay, young, not my type (w/ extra E),
but I support his artistry
singing in my ears on the train;
this Aaron reading Trek…

“Leave”
with sudden stop in crowded car.

“Driving me wild”
with sadness tremble of wanting
but not quite having.

Taste of man sitting next to me.
Fantasy haunts us.
He knows my thoughts (cuckold mind-meld):
a brave fool to play this game.

End this
to collapse into memory song
of stranger friend…

“No One Knows How It Will End.”

Movie quotes are an invasive comfort
and lonely with no one to recognize them.

Kiss him. Kiss him.

Let him recognize me.

Written by Jason Wright
October 23, 2017

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Delirante (He’s Gone)

He was here more than year;
he was here for so long.

He was queerly sincere
and shrouded in song.

He was there with despair
in mysterious scars…

He was blonde and absconded
from bright lights and bars.

But these words obscured
are like gospel from me…

My words are not heard
by apostle to thee…

Who worshiped and wept
though you never knew…

How he stayed where we played
as I fade into you.

Written by Jason Wright
October 1, 2017

For Mazzy Star, Saint Etienne & the boy (now a man),
who made them matter.

– ABOUT THE POEM –
The title springs from a word I saw (Delirante) at random when I wrote, which means delirious, which is how I felt at the time. “He’s Gone” are lyrics from the Saint Etienne song “Like a Motorway”. There’s a guy I met in early 1995 in Michigan, named Steve Rink. We were never close but we had several friends in common, went to some of the same bars, read some of the same books and listened to some of the same music. We also hooked up once in an odd sort of circle jerk in summer of 1996. I don’t know him well, but for whatever reason he’s popped up a lot in my poetry, or at least my perceptions of him pop up now and again; I don’t feel like I actually know him that well. I’ve always found him attractive, but I find lots of people attractive and there are many suck people that I never write about at all. So I don’t really know what that means.

When I moved to New York, or relatively soon after, Steve was living in NYC as well. We traded messages about possibly hanging out, but it took me years to adjust to being here. In many ways, I’m still adjusting. And I also struggle with connecting with people. If I’m at a place, talking to someone in person, I’m very good at this. But on the phone, via text or email or whatever, I really suck at making things happen. And so nothing ever did. We were friends on Facebook though and he’s always been tapped into music that I love since I first met him. I loved when he posted about this or that piece that I didn’t know, because I knew that it meant I would most likely love it as well.

Before Steve lived in NYC he lived overseas somewhere. I don’t even remember where. I only knew because before Facebook we were friends on Myspace. He married a man, whose name I don’t remember. There was a video of the wedding and them dancing to “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star, which struck me as perfect. Years later, when he left New York, he posted a video of Saint Etienne’s “Like a Motorway”. And that’s where some of this springs from.

He doesn’t seem to be on Facebook anymore. He’s off being a serious whale watcher / conservationist / photographer. From a far, I’m happy for him. I’ve heard from several friends in Michigan that when he’s in our old stomping grounds that he’s on all the apps. Good for him. Good for them, I guess.

What I’m saying, I think, is that I wish I knew him better. And I miss having music cues from him, because he really did listen to the best shit! But I’m happy he’s out and about doing his thing and I hope he’s happy.

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Nightmare Confections

Washed out yesterday
feels distant as dreams
this morning of desperate
deceptive rape confessions.

Did loving / fearing them
make all the difference?

If so, I should
swallow all of
their sorrowful shame
to wake so
inspired and spritely.

Written by Jason Wright
September 30, 2017

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Drunken Scribbles After Midnight

Flash on subway
shooting by green / blue couple
and I know that moment
from years before – – is that me?

Is that watercolor smear
a glimpse of my past?

But I don’t know him
and I never looked like the other guy.

Smashing Pumpkins want to stand inside my love.

People have told me I look like Billy Corgan.
Might as well say I look like Humpty Dumpty.
I couldn’t ever be put together that way…
even if all the queen’s studs rode me
for 16 hours straight.

You, sitting next to me:

KEEP READING WHAT I WRITE!
IT AMUSES ME. 🙂

Other song was used
in video of my making,
much to the outrage of a certain Boy in Orange…

I don’t even know the title and it’s on my fucking playlist.

I’d had a nightmare about concentration camps
with this for a soundtrack,
and I don’t even remember that dream anymore
so the song is free to be itself at last.

Drunk trans woman laughs at what I write;
you are no mystery to me and you need not
scream at the others, begging to be fisted.

Nice to meet you Billie. (I transcribe)

Do you only love yourself
when you drink?

Written by Jason Wright
September 27, 2017

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Battle Scarred

Message came through the wire:
betrayal, hallucinogens and lies.

The walking wounded
attacked faithful friend
before shattering the war radio –
Line goes dead.

Shell shocked survivors
shake their heads in confusion;
refusing to give chase to
someone willingly / needlessly
running from them.

On the battlefield of life
in the trenches of drama
former lovers
behind enemy lines of friendship
crumble to Hiroshima ash,
seemingly destroyed
and unable to rise.

“Our armor was useless.”

“Our love was easily forgotten
in the chaos of bloodshed.”

Your madness is endless,
My sadness is friendless,

I will not surrender
to man who would end this.

On opposite sides
of a battlefield vital…

We sing different songs
which have similar titles…

Which share the same message
if not the same score…

Love is a weapon
in a time filled with war.

Written by Jason Wright
September 25, 2017

For Sean

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The Party That Wasn’t

Four of us there;
though it’s hard to believe:
Bald Jason, Paul
and Darla and Steve.

The latter I stripped
in Ann Arbor fountain
before baring flesh
pressing into his bottom;
concealing our pact
(which they labeled obscene)
and that this healing act
had in fact made us clean.

The nerve that in public
made time seem to end:

Perving the lovesick
with crime through the lense
of twenty-one years
flashing by in a blur…

The party that wasn’t
for the people we were.

A moment of lust
that had built beyond reason,
Momentous trust
in the shadow of treason,
A moment of courage
acknowledged and shared,
Encouraged by touch
though we weren’t prepared
for the judgment of strangers
and friends left outside,
as we puzzled through riddles
with longing our guide,
But licentious struggles
are seldom rewarded,
For all our successes
we may have been thwarted…
For the world gazed in fear
as if love were contagious…
Our fumbled premiere
saw us stumble toward greatness.

Written by Jason Wright
September 20, 2017

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DEVASTATION

Kissing Josh. September 1998.

When I met him,
a prisoner’s attempt to break free.

My relationship.
His deniability.

He was so forward the night we met.

Terrifying.

Couldn’t see he was teetering on the brink
just to kiss me.

For Josh –
Who’s kiss I’ll never forget,
who’s random phone calls haunt me to this day
and who still has plenty of magic
(even if “The Magician” doesn’t recognize it as such).

I scrawled this in my notebook on the train sometime last week and just got around to transcribing it here. I hope it finds you well.

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Jason Write

When I can’t think –
When I can’t remember –
Can’t write –

I tell myself it’s enough to
breathe, dress, leave, walk, ride.

And when I’m lucky
something connects
like a stranger’s kiss –
an excitement fumbling towards inspiration
through shock treatment lust
or cold water dread
traveling / taking me to where I always wish to be.

I write of nothing
desperate to not lose
what I once believed
and forgot
and was only reminded of on special occasions like
birthdays, anniversaries or when
he fucked that goth metalhead drag queen in Budapest.

I write so often that I sometimes can’t meet other writers
as I’m far too busy writing.

I read this for the others
as the time ticks away
after verses and compliments
and a shared glimmer
in the eyes of strangers.

Written by Jason Wright
September 12, 2017

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Incognizant Admirer

I knew a boy once
when I was younger…

Really,
it was more like I knew people
who knew him;
an acquaintance.

I thought him straight
but kind,
possibly manipulative,
but when I saw another turn his head
I knew that I had been mistaken.

Perhaps he was confused…
Perhaps I was confused…

Even when involved with a man I knew,
I didn’t quite believe it.

He was like
a vision of youth
and culture
and ideas relating to things
and places I didn’t have access to,
beyond his possible longing,
his desire for his own gender.

The night that he drunkenly kissed me
was flattering and insulting all at once.

I gained no access, you see,
and though his lust was honest
and the way his eyes met mine
left little doubt that I was attractive to him,
I’ve never quite convinced myself
that he wasn’t seeking to make my friend jealous.

I’m no longer friends with the man who had been his lover;
nor have I been such for nearly two decades…

I wonder what ever became of this man
who glistened in the background of my life.

His dark hair
and the way his smile made his eyes dance…

Gustavo.

I stumble for his name
in the car
as Aaron and I listen to “Giovanni’s Room”.

I hope he came to a better end;
he deserved at least that much…

I thought his name beautiful
and a fitting word to match
his twilit lambent contradiction of a smile.

If he lives,
I doubt he has spared me
a second thought.

Written by Jason Wright
September 8, 2017

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