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.
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.
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 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.
The changes in texture can be delicate or pernicious; at every annual increment there comes a blending, a harmony of vintage soul and cutting edge splendor, shades of winter chills and sprays of summer sunsets.
Some years stay with us longer than others and can be overpowering, melding lilting notes ferocious and graceful, deadly and dominating.
Others are so stealthy and discreet as to seem completely illusory.
I ponder such things as the librarian unbuttons my shirt again.
Clark Kent tells me I’m cute and smart while I blush, imagining the taste of his 31 year old Kryptonian asshole, which will germinate once again one month from yesterday.
Every gesture, hint of desire, every longing whisper is patterned on a needlessly shameful lust, disguising an eroticized guilt that all beasts, alien or otherwise must one day come to endure.
Need as aphrodisiac. Weakness presented as strength.
A world of the senses where nothing makes sense and all answers are contradictory.
The kissing is subtle, blurred water color shimmer of thoughts and sensations.
I suspect I will only ever be his friend, despite our movements to the contrary; I overcomplicate things, you see?
People in relationships are threatened by complexity. Keep things simple. Keep sex simple. Only sex is never simple for me and never has been. I can pretend that it is. I can say that it is. But I must be more than a trick to access such depths.
It has been ages since I even attempted to reach such profundity without conversation, connection, correlation…
Yet even I know this pleasure is simple, while all that writhes beneath and behind is exceedingly complicated.
I’ve just never been good at wearing masks.
Aaron would understand this, I think. He knows me, yes, but he would connect with my questions because he now asks them himself.
Zsolt was anything but simple, and yet he was simple all the same.
A brave, defiant act that I can both admire and detest, encourage and deny; I feel for that man. Under different circumstances, a change of location, I likely wouldn’t have been nearly so troubled.
Animals howling in the night. Lonely, reassuring, reclaiming their places by the fire.
The geography of sex, the distance between two hearts in the aftermath of such a journey, is a mathematical equation revealing how much I will hurt… which is seemingly diametrically opposite of what others seem to achieve or experience.
“Are you okay?” he asks me 12,000 times.
I ask him about Lois Lane and I listen to his smile about Grindr, his love for their home in Boystown, and I know that he loves her.
I let him know I’m not having sex with him tonight.
It’s not because of Lois. Well it is. But’s it’s not. It’s not even because of Aaron, who has said that I’m allowed to sleep with any superhero of my choosing. It’s really just because of my need for, and love of, complication.
I never want to be just a trick.
The librarian with the interestingly spelled middle name who has complimented me on my seemingly youthful features and the size of my photographed cock walks with me to the Metropolis subway, begs me to text him all night, and sings me to slumber beneath poetry scrawls in my stoned drunken handwriting.
