Category: Poems

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The Balcony Scene

He has to leave. We’ve not slept.

We fooled around all night
while his parents wondered where he was.

We’d met at a kind of masquerade party,
where he fed me tequila,
but that was a different night.

The night we met I went home
with him and his friend David,
and although I slept naked between them
nothing was allowed to happen…
because all I wanted was him.

Looking back, I wonder…
what would have happened if I’d not objected?

Would our threesome have continued?
Would we all have remained friends?
Had they ever shared a lover before?
Did they do so long after I was gone?

I’ve never considered any of that,
but it doesn’t really matter.

Back in the moment, after our night
spent together and he’s still leaving.

He’s not even leaving my place
because I’m staying with a friend.

Was it in Diamond Heights?

“It’s funny how beautiful people look
when they’re walking out the door.”

Even then, I heard those words
as I was watching him go,
feeling the joy of what we’d just shared
and the sting of our parting; back then I’m
not sure if I’ll ever see him again.

I grab my camera, walk out onto the balcony,
call his name and snap the picture that confirms
Toni Collette’s line from “Velvet Goldmine”.

He was beautiful.
Facebook lets me know that he’s still beautiful.

And my many naked memories are more beautiful
than waking life would seem to deem possible.

Written by Jason Wright
February 27, 2018

The photo / experience that inspired it.
The spelling error printed version I took to my poetry group.

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The Same Deep Water

The beautiful savage
drifting in the back of my mind
is nearly forgotten
beneath ginger dreams
and transgender crushes.

“Everybody knows the boat is sinking”
but if I’m not there to witness it…
does it capsize and submerge
or does it merely fade away?

Kate Bush struggles to reel me back in,
but seductive as she is
I have far too much to do and explore
to immediately surrender to her siren sway.

And yet I want to return
and travel through those fictional waters,
which slowly swallowed me whole
a mere decade before.

Ten years ago and so much has happened
but an unexpected blessing of chance has allowed my survival
that I may reencounter that phantom vessel;
to finish the cycle which began before my awareness &
to finally bring my drowning to completion.

Written by Jason Wright
February 27, 2018

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Bill & Ben (It’s Them Again)

They struggle through spin,
repeatedly heated,
Spritely ghosting across the years
to inspire long after intentions are forsaken,
forgotten and buried.

The contradictions are too numerous to name
as each star burns to nothing
plummeting from the inverse sky
in a brilliant spark unseen
but heard in echoes of erotic aural bliss.

Written by Jason Wright
February 13, 2018

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Diversity

Not all brothers need be the same
or enraptured by the mirror ball illumination
glittering on the skin of our shared origin story.

The aspects of dissimilar experiences
guide us to drastically different outcomes
as we are nourished (and sometimes poisoned)
by the same rainbow roots.

Written by Jason Wright
February 13, 2018

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Game Night

When you walked in to Starbs
with my man on your arm
in your charmingly gay jeans,
I smiled
and I thought that this could be fun.

I ran into an old customer
who told me about his son’s tumbling class
as I watched you both ordering coffee,
with an easy,
relaxed manner,
that spoke volumes of what was to come.

Your sing song ramblings
were the essence of adorable
and you seemed younger
than your pictures,
while also managing to look completely different
from whatever angle
I spied you from.

We agreed on Buffy’s Gift
and disagreed on LGBT actors,
though not in the typical, angry, grating way,
which Aaron and I had just discussed
in relation to a similar friend,
who has already secretly been mentioned here.

We had matching board games
which we managed to win
before I took pain killer
when I expected no more games to be played.

This, aside from
the tongue fuck of a kiss
which was seemingly dared
and then shared without mercy.

Later, that other kiss on the kitchen counter,
and you were the ghost of Sean Mobley,
whispering across my skin
before we all retired to the place
I expected us not to go…
which in all fairness,
I had insisted on.

There were obstacles to overcome
but in a relaxingly hazy, lustful way,
or that’s how I experienced it at the time.

Your sexy ass,
which I yearned to devour,
was sadly out of service…
and my painkiller infused erection
was quickly down for the count,
yet your beautifully thick dick
and mouthwatering sack
were open for business.

I did fucking love your sex drenched cock,
stretching me open
after riding your face
like you were some kind of bucking bronco.

You were energetic,
switching positions,
still looking different from every angle,
painfully / pleasurably
thrusting deep inside me,
filling the rubber with an impressive load of cum.

You left soon after,
since you don’t like to cuddle,
and the two of you needed to be up early
the next morning.

You took Ian McKellen (as James Whale) with you
and we traded messages on this or that service
but I don’t hear your voice in those words.

In these random exchanges
it’s hard to tell what is real;
hard to tell if we’re going to see you again.

Perhaps you really were just a shadow of Sean,
come to sing me carols and wake me with a kiss.

But I’d like to talk to you again: face to face.

It’s not all about your dick;
it’s everything else too;
all those angles are views I’d like to explore.

My sentences sent to convey this seem awkward
and desperate, but that’s not how they’re meant.

Like I said, it’s hard to tell what is real
in the light of day;
hard to decipher if what we experienced
was the beginning of friendship
or merely the end of a short, yet satisfying game.

Written by Jason Wright
February 13, 2018

For Joe

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His Monsters

Patrick shakes his head;
dancing in place
as they come for him once again
in figment and thought,
in memory & dream.

He clacks away at obsidian keys
as he struggles
to spin pain into art,
flesh into word,
bravery into poems pressed together
in collective battle scars;
assorted victories and losses
on his way to documented catharsis.

Written by Jason Wright
February 13, 2018

For Patrick Johnson

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Angels

A cascade failure of memories
wiped away by drugs
struggles toward a surface stain
of calculated depth.

Flickering images
like tongues of flame
shimmer through a train car of strangers…
ignited and extinguished
in the same breath…
I feel their warm glow
long after they are nothing
but smoke and ash.

Cold rain sparkle
pricks me awake
as I stumble through the mist
into another dreaming space
of bright chill and a remembering of self.

Memories are dreams
of a time that no longer exists.

We were all dead years ago
and my struggling ghost
is nothing so rare or sacred
as that fumbling child faggot
who plateaued
in the momentary recognition
of shared desire.

Written by Jason Wright
February 13, 2018

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unPrEPared

In July he’s beautiful…
beyond what I’d known,
beckoning behind me,
breathlessly below me,
and he’s blatantly blessed my insides;
benevolently and becomingly.

Less than 2 weeks ago and he was harrowing…
having hazed our harmonation
when he hollered he’d rather have
HIV than herpes simplex.

The lilting listing of letters STOPS
as I’m overwhelmed to trembling
at hearing the sentence uttered within my lifetime,
let alone with such a haunting sense of longing.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

I want to scream. Want to shake him.
Want to slap him for such a blasphemous confession.

But I hold him close as I shiver
and he whispers about pills and stigma,
outbreaks and misconceptions,
the men (plural) who’ve rejected him,
and the men (plural) who’ve accepted him
since his November 2017 infection.

His illness merely scares me but
his promiscuity terrifies me;
I am nothing if not a child of the AIDS pandemic.

He was amazing when he was inside of me back in July.
I even dreamed of a life spent together. The three of us, I mean.

But he wanted someone all his own
and so he never stopped looking:
in Seattle, Canada, Hawaii or New York City.

He tells me that he was in my place years before
and our symmetry stuns me all the more.

I pull him on top of me,
my legs wrapped around him,
as I whisper in his ear about our blissful summer night
and how I thought I’d scared him away
with my longing for a life together.

He silences my tears with his own silent weeping;
his voice shattering into a broken child’s quivering
as he tells me that I’m not to blame;
that it was he who frightened himself away.

Fear defines his every action;
tinges the edges of every decision…
I hear it in his voice and I know that he speaks the truth.

There is no pre-exposure prophylaxis to be taken for this unease.

He leaves us,
naming us blameless
and yet there is blood on my hands…

For although we remain in the land of the uninfected,
none of us could ever be classified as clean.

Written by Jason Wright
February 13, 2018

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OKIE

Photograph style
is nearly eclipsed

Epitaph smile:
the curve of his lips…

Warpaint & love:
perfection misshapen.

The feint hint of blood
or am I mistaken?

The light in his eyes:
are they tears or illusion?

Can’t quite surmise
yet I’m steered by confusion…

It’s clear that his visage
is something inspired…

It’s clear that this image
is someone desired…

The paradox here
is not worth denying…

Men can be beautiful
while they are crying.

Written by Jason Wright
January 31, 2018

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Multifaceted

We fought kamikaze
yet thoughts were systemic.

You joined us for coffee
and brought a pandemic.

We strayed and collapsed
as we choked about freedom.

We played and we laughed
and we spoke about geekdom.

You talked very quickly
as if we were racing.

Half-cocked and pretty;
massive and bracing.

You stood there indifferent
as your past untangled

and looked very different
whatever the angle.

A hundred perversions
as opening move.

I wondered which version
would prove to be true?

Peculiar blue collar
on rough side of mirth?

A junior to Potter
on scruff of the Earth?

Your favorite Doctor?

That doesn’t seem odd.

But were you a monster
or were you a god?

Were you a waiter
with musical talk?

A sly masturbator
with beautiful cock?

Pardon, the writer
is famously slow.

Hard to decipher
the faces of Joe.

Written by Jason Wright
January 30, 2018

For Joe

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