1
Disparaged Gilgamesh
forsakes the raging scars of scorn.
As marriage of the flesh
takes the stage and we are born.
Archived in the symbol’s light
that mends us when we’re broken.
Our lives are but a single night
that ends before we’ve woken.
A night of savage
strain
that’s part discomfort;
part despair.
A right of passage
(PAIN)
that’s hard to comfort
without prayer.
But the tributes that they spoke
were only lies about the queers.
Distributing the woke
with open eyes to shed their tears.
2
They prayed to feed the hunger –
wasn’t heard in all the chatter.
They say that I look younger
but it doesn’t really matter.
I’m older than I was
and I will be ’till I’m dead.
A bolder man because
I still believe in what was said.
The fairytales and prayers
are pretty stories
as we age…
The marriage failed –
affairs are pitied glories
on the stage…
And the words we speak…
the lies enmeshed in flesh are all but finished.
We fade away to seek
the guise of Gilgamesh diminished.
Written By Jason Wright
April 25, 2026
As I write now, I think I may start taking notes of what I was thinking about when I wrote because I’m uploading many poems from my archives and many of them don’t say what they’re about, and having written thousands of them, over several decades, I don’t always remember what I was thinking or feeling. I also often dedicated a poem to someone and only wrote their first names, and I often can’t remember who this or that person was, so I’m probably going to put that in context moving forward.
As for this piece, I was thinking about how people often tell me that I look younger than I am, which is nice, but I let it fool me for awhile, that because I looked younger, then I actually was younger. But I’m not. I’m still as old as I am. And assuming there are no issues with my health or an accident or whatever, I’m still that much closer to dying. Bodies only last for so long. And as I wrote that down I started thinking about religion, myth, prayer, how homophobia pushes many people away from religion, and how for a time I had really horrible night terrors having to do with imagining death – both my own and / or Aaron’s. I’ve worked on the latter and while I expect it will possibly crop up again, it doesn’t haunt me quite as much as it once did. The title is a veiled reference to the diminishment of Gilgamesh, via Galadriel in the Lord or the Rings: “I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”
