My eyes have been burning I dream they are bleeding allergic reaction to book I am reading I’ve read it before but it’s still just as haunting: an honest admission of hardship and wanting excerpts of life which echo my own reflected in eyes of men that I’ve known moment and whisper the sound of my breathing the fall of a zipper where wanting is needing the touch of a stranger or the thrill of a glance safety and danger of an old circumstance that creams little death under weight of his stare wet dreams made flesh as our souls are laid bare in each conversation and every discourse each revelation is beyond intercourse as we come together in solace (like marriage) his is a volume I always will cherish.
innocence amorous virtuous sensuous yearn and return repressed stream of consciousness permissible trips stain his kissable lips and he ghosts the tips lest his secret life slips on a dissonant grace obsessed across nations his innocent face is repressed revelation disapproval incurred by his indiscretion a removal of words is that a confession deletion implies there was something to hide you complete the affair when the truth is denied is message deleted admission of guilt this lesson repeated by tears that are spilt
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.
Tonight after haunted days of painful painlessness a siege of sirens comes to serenade, seduce and succor… to simplify… to supply me with solace as I drown beneath waves of mutilation (with apologies to Pixies).
My Aaron sings to me his soothing tones which are less like music; more like verse… strumming my ribcage beneath salt water seas, we swim naked for hours through tears we’ve not shed.
The other Aaron, the Aaron between us, he haunts through photograph, text and memory, echoing across time and geography to be one with us again.
There are naked hungry men beneath those shadowed depths, those sombre shades of green lit by melancholy movie soundtracks.
The mermen dive for pleasure and breathe truthfully through gilled fantasy lies which excite and entice me before dragging me down to my death.
In amber and glow, through fogged glass of sunken ships she is weeping her mermaid crocodile tears.
This is not truly Jamie; this being is not my sister or my therapist. The former doesn’t speak to me, even on land and the latter will soon be lost to me – just as I left her (unforgivably) in the haste of my waking nightmare.
She will forgive me this unforgivable sin.
She is strong but she is wounded – like me, underwater – like me, and she will rise again – like me.
Could this truly be her after all?
I smile and wave goodbye to her but she can’t see me until Thursday.
Mermaid simulacrum smiles just the same… but here my visions come to an end.
A year ago now you were lost in the dark and being alone there it changed us I fought hard for you you fought for me too we fought for the truth that estranged us we struggled with doubt I smuggled us out but there in the light we were strangers for finding the light did not make us right the truth set us free but with dangers and it was discovered the damage we suffered still plagued us in spite of our patience our ignorance threatened our romance was deafened we’d nearly been drowned by complacence found to be guilty my love nearly killed me life is a bitch an assassin but time worked it’s magic became more romantic we survived by the grace of compassion and there on that ledge we stood on the edge of a death that still makes me shudder and finding us there beyond our despair we rescued ourselves and each other and now we still struggle both in dark and in light but the struggle is real and you make it alright for life without fight is a life without meaning and a life without plight to our love is demeaning this year having passed profoundly, it’s true I hope that we last and I’m glad I found you.
Afraid of the water but desperate for memory dying for liquid blue and sun daze of historical bliss; we split the difference and now there’s only the gathering and it’s aftermath.
The express train is overwhelmed and runs local. A wise, if inconvenient choice.
Monsters lurk just out of view but they’re old friends and I would embrace them if they dared step into my light.
Man at my right reads all as I scrawl but looks away shamed at being so named.
It matters not.
The monsters are still there. They want to burn down my simple joy but only because they’re cold and lonely.
“Come. Join my fire. No need for us to be enemies. We are brothers of the same trauma; pieces of a collective whole. Our birthday approaches. Coalesce. Experience. Rejoice. Weep. Remember when we were only one little hungry child? Adulthood comes for us all. Don’t fight. Face it with me. Can’t leave you behind. We are stronger together.”
