Sleeping with the fishes or, fish sleeping
While still swimming
Either way I could **** in your hat
And yea, you'd still be brimming
And yea, I'd still be sinning,
Spinning like a sacrilegious dreidel
All hard edges

You learn to forget after so many years of misappropos et faux-pas
      Remembrance is tantamount to admission of guilt
Lord knows none of us are capable of admitting that
Even though everyone was wrong,
Everyone is wrong, from time to time and I saw the lemon, I saw the lime
But "I don't need none of that ****" with my tequila shot
And I brushed it away like so many tired analogies of mosquitos
That all make me equally as or moreso sick than all the ******* lies
We told each other, and the *****, and the ******* amateur
Psychopharmacology,

Because oh yes, we knew what we were talking about
Though those chump change shrinks never did
Psychiatry? Pompous clinically trained diagnosticians
Choking on the uncertainties of the human mind
Trying to measure the weight of smoke

I remember the first time you kissed me.
We had escaped the loud echoes of your drunk friends,
and left my too-sober roommates to wait for my return.
Your best friend ran up the stairs after I left,
I skipped down the street as the girls called after me, questioning.
I remember the smile that would not fade,
the one that gave all of the answers away.

I remember the second time you kissed me.
We drank too much wine and sat too close together
and told each other too many things.
You yelled at me to stop talking so much,
I asked you questions you pretended not to hear.
I remember the way you kept trying to leave,
but how you did not want to go.

I remember the third time you kissed me.
We got into a fight that you tried to fix
with an overnight stay in the room where we first kissed.
We didn't talk about the fight.
I told you things I'll never forget because I knew you'd never remember.
I remember the way you tried to kiss me in the morning,
and how I left, pretending I didn't know.

I remember the fourth time you kissed me.
That night, I realized we would only ever be friends
and then our hands kept touching, our legs intertwined.
You asked me to tell you everything and anything,
as you wrapped your arms around me.
I remember the way I could see you, looking at me,
out of the corner of my eye when I was too afraid to look at you.

I remember all of the times after when you kissed me.
Graduating to morning, then afternoon,
private to public, drunk to sober.
You kissed me for all reasons,
and no reason at all.
I remember the way you always smiled afterwards,
and how it always made me feel sure.

I remember the last time you kissed me.
It was too early in the morning for there to be time,
my eyes couldn't tell if the sun was awake.
I waited and waited for there to be another one,
but there wasn't.
I remember thinking of all the other kisses,
and knowing too deeply that this would be it.

"One fast move or I'm gone," I'd thought,
And lo here I am ready to cast everything to the wind like so many sails and
Off again go running, running away from me

There's a rainbow in the sky
   Painted up on
                                   High
I take that as a sign
                                            Of great Things to come
  Like O you'll love me deeply
       And O I'll embrace
              New life completely
    Falling into open arms so spirit sunken sweetly, weakly
   Showing us all the right way
                     To begin again

I look at Sil and start to SCREAM and yell and yammer excitedly with this new idea bursting forth -  Let’s go to Sunday mass hungover, or maybe still drunk. Maybe we can puke in the pews or confess our sins to the pederast priest! Sil, always an easy read, agreed instantly so we left the watering hole in the wall, brimming with stalwart stoic sin and soaking in ***, gin and ugh…pheromones.

“fadder I puked in yer pews. How many hail Marys is dat?”

“fadder I smoked a joint in the rectory.”

“fadder I occasionally sleeps wit men.” I cry,

We see his previously shock beet red face light up.

“Wit MEN fadder wit men.  Not little boys”

Disappointed pederast priest preaching piously about the sins of drugs and alcohol and *** and ****** and y’know, pretty much everything fun ever.

“fadder I sold me mudders dentures for new headshots.”

“fadder I was in a ****” et cetera. After the pederast has a coronary we’ll steal the communion wine and dance on the church *****. You can play a sweet soft soothing melody accompanied soliloquy or Debussy’s Claire de Lune. We’ll remember better days when he could still play and cry red tears, ****** drunk. Stuck in our respective funk ruts our calls to the coronary catholic become more somber.

“fadder I’m afraid. I’m afraid of dying…I’m afraid of living.”

Rolling around on the confession booth floor now,

“fadder I want to die, fadder I tried to **** myself”

Sil shows strong salient scalpel scars that we both still remember suturing shut.

“fadder I should be in the Waterford In-patient wing”

By now we’ve revived the poor old Father…As it happens he’s a rowdy red whiskey noser. Sil’s feeling good, rambunctious and reeling secretly seething I believe.

“So fadder explain to me why it’s a sin to love another man but every other ******* week some ******’ pillar of the community cops for kiddie ****?!” His ire is up, red cheeked wide eyed boiling over.

The priest is mute silent on the subject at first, finally looking up from a leather bound book, he starts to speak in careful, measured words unfamiliar to the impatience of our generation.

“My son, I’ve never ****** any boys, nor do I hate ‘the gays’ and what’s all this about killing yourselves and Waterford Bridge Road?” I feel a lecture coming on…”What’s the allure of this demure throwaway life attitude you have, so many of you.”

This question throws a long echoing silence through the puke stained pews.  A symbol for broken, wasted, busted, beat down lost youth. Or whatever. (Say it like a valley girl honey.)

Breaking the silence I turn to him quietly, “I guess for me I really don’t see the point of any of it beyond a couple of laughs and a lot of highs. I see the corruption that I’m too stupid to fix, that I can’t realistically change.”

Sil interjects “I think generationally we just don’t really have a tether – Everyone exists superficially, digitally we don’t know how to talk to one another we just get drunk or high and crash into each other blindly praying for a little connection on those rare occasions we realize how disconnected we really are.”

“Generationally? Is that even a word?!”

“Shut up milk drinker!” Sil punches me

“Yeah everyone sitting alone in rooms or all together with a *** and coke and a cellphone silently tapping away.”

The pederast nods “you boys need family, children, religion even. You know it brings us together as a community. The ****** of the masses son” He pauses, wagging a finger “and I don’t consider that to be a pejorative.”

Taking a ridiculous swig I nod “I understand the appeal really but I prefer actual opiates  and being alone and not changing.”

After a box of communion wine, (Yes it can come in boxes, look it up) we bid farewell to the swell drunk ‘ol pederast priest, promising to return someday with Irish Mist for his thirsty Irish lips, (Is that bigotry?) the old coot.

“Sil come over and stay in my bed we can binge watch a season of Louie and drink ******’ Borises and I’ll play guitar for you an…” I stammer on

“STOP! You had me at BED” Sil yells at me belligerently as we stagger down Bully Street arms intertwined drunk walking. It’s foggy and misty, our feet soaked and my body is drained of life. Finally we knock into my front door struggling with keys, we must have dropped 5 times.

“I think yer scars are beautiful Sil” (I love it, I do) I tell her softly as I run my hand over them, feeling the slight texture change, the scar raised…We kiss and stare into eyes, not alone not for tonight.