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.
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.
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 such 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.
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.
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…
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 lens 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.
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.
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.
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.
