That hour when (where) boys were not all they seemed –
Looking back at that boy who would seek and destroy me long after the fact… I could not react…
In my memory intact I am cursed and I screamed.
Written by Jason Wright January 8, 2000
For Patrick: Please Forgive Me.
Patrick was a boy I met on vacation who showed an interest in me, who I should have reacted to but didn’t, which is something I have always regretted, though I know I was trying to do what I thought was right. And we parted on good terms, with a hug goodbye, but it feels like an unresolved thing.
Someone that I don’t really know, whose appearances are always brief and electric, who I wanted before I knew his name and long before his sweetest confession.
Carrie zipping up Nate’s jacket and Nate sitting by the back windows at the pictured and infamous Denny’s, circa 1999?
In the late 90s I spent nearly every night at a Denny’s located at 3310 Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor, which was permanently closed on March 30, 2022, and has since been demolished to make way for a new Chick-fil-A. Gross.
That’s where I knew Nate from. I never knew his last name. I didn’t think I stood a chance with him but he said something really cryptic to me once that turned heads…but I only saw him once after that and it was in passing and he looked like he had really been put through the wringer. It wasn’t the kind of situation where I could talk to him and I never really knew him very well, so he just disappeared from my life. I hope he’s good.
I met him that night when it couldn’t have mattered… We had gone too far when it did – (to be sure)…
For before we had ever spoken or thought, we were lost to that darkness – with never a cure.
His eyes bright with drunken boyish wonder,
This frock coated gentleman bathed in black light, and filled with a sadness that tore me asunder:
We shattered together and splinted the night.
In the encounters that followed we rescued each other but we knew we would never be saved…
For there are no survivors from the plague of desires; not when both men are ripe to be craved.
Our dire bravery in ruinous pleasure; this sickness that found us as brothers… was doomed from the moment our eyes met each others’: no cure for these lost hungry lovers.
Written by Jason Wright April 28, 1999
For Dorian:
Who is far too delicious and urban an angel to not inspire my mind or my dick.
From within my brutal dreamscape… the Incubus takes control.
His somber gaze inflicts my heart; his countenance takes its toll.
For once you’ve drowned within those eyes of his… eyes like burning coals:
Their memory will haunt you, tempt, rape and taunt you… and torment your immortal soul.
This riveting integration of arctic death and heated desire, burns colder than any blizzard and blows hotter than any Hellfire – his torrid aura bathes us as his jubilant sufferings inspire, he’s the passive assailant – the willing victim – he is the conquered survivor.
This archaic newborn… This pedagogue of innocent corruption… This algid inferno trapped within a flesh enshrouded seduction is an intimate portrayal of pain and of a generation’s self destruction.
Written by Jason Wright April 1, 1995
– For Steve –
Who is far too damned beautiful for his own twisted good!
I wrote this, half in love with this guy that I didn’t know, but hesitant to pursue him. There were good reasons not to, or so I felt. He was quite young, though I met him at a bar. And there were rumors which I later learned were spread by an ex-lover, that made him seem slightly predatory. I liked the word play and I’ve always liked contrasting opposites, and my lust, trepidation, and mistrust (aimed more at myself than at him, given my then recent breakup with a man who had raped me) was clearly apparent. I gave him the poem and hoped that he liked it, though I’m not sure that it’s very flattering. Someone, I can’t remember who, later told me that a boyfriend of his (Matt) who had read it, brought it up in an argument and said that I’d painted a perfect picture of him, which has always made me feel a bit guilty. It felt like something I’d written had been used against him and that hurt me. I doubt anybody remembers this now except me. I mean, people are always telling me that they are astonished by the kind of things that get stuck in my head and this is likely one of them.
I’ve written at least a thousand poems over the years. Some of them might be good, but I’ll mostly leave that up to others to decide.
I often scribble things in notebooks and then leave them behind, so a lot of my work is never transcribed for the world to see or are lost to time. I had reams of poetry on Facebook Notes, where they were unceremoniously deleted without my consent. Oh well. I should have kept better backup copies, but I’ve always sucked at that. Again, I’m very disorganized and that I had anything online at all is somewhat of a victory? At least people saw them. Anyways, I’m slowly giving all that I still have access to a home here, but it could take me a very long time. Forgive me.
Here’s a list of my poetry, listed by the date I published it, which is often the day that I wrote it, but occasionally differs.
