there was definitely a spark
it could have been a match to a gas leak
the striplights could have all blown at once
everyone else in the world besides you and me could have gone up in flames

I didn't hear it, I didn't see it,
but I know something happened

because god,
my heart is on fire

you cannot idle by on your Saturday evenings, wasting away to the song you could have written if only you had thought of it in time!

your lungs will inflate and deflate and your heart will go dudum for a few decades yet!

you must live! you must take the dusk in your stride;

take a stroll on Sunday morning,
you'll find something to write about
and in doing so,
you'll find something to live for

can you touch me and pretend like the fat doesn't gather around my chest and hips? can you touch me like a boy would touch a boy?
can you hear me like it's a polite young man talking? can you hear the shrill, nasally drone and remember that it's supposed to be me?  
can you stop looking into my eyes? can you sew them shut? can you stop pretending to know all that I am?
can you come up behind me and smash my head in with a glass bottle?

as I lay there, hugging my knees, tucked up into my jacket
the 4am gales swept away any comfort I may have found, and I thought of a wisdom I once heard,
"this, too, shall pass"

and I clung to the thought as my eyes drifted shut,
as the dawn stumbled its way forth
and the street lights weren't needed anymore
"this, too, shall pass"

and as my head drifted from concrete
back to cotton sheets
and I felt safe and content and greatful for all I have
I breathed a sigh
softly, in relief
"this too shall pass,"

I fiddle around with the truth in my hands
trying to mold it into a shape I can stand
(that isn't age 7 when I didn't understand)

I look up and say with a pensive sigh,
"I've never made love to anyone,"
because that is no lie

but I promise myself, there is hope for a body profane as mine
a ****** I will be! and I'll make love for the first time-

to a lover, to a tender hand,
to another boy and not a man

in the queen-sized bed, on the soft white sheets
intertwined and in love, our bodies will meet

as I sat there watching the birds dart about in my own little fenced off Eden
I thought to myself
good grief! That tar they pave the roads with is ugly!
unfortunately,
not even weeds grow in an asphalt garden

to live with a female body;
it would have been fine!
if only that body
happened to be mine