"Thank you
for granting me
this opportunity
to face these aspects
of myself
i'd much rather
sweep under the carpet."

It’s just after 5AM but I am up,
Compelled to write and share with you
Bad images
From video and TV.

I gave you a newborn calf being killed by a lion or something.
But there are countless more.
Young seals being swallowed by killer whales.
A young queen bee stabbing its rivals to death before or after they hatch.

An unlucky wildebeest is pushed by a panicked herd
Back into the river
And into the jaws of a crocodile.
Survival of the fittest
Or luckiest.

Animals running about some abattoirs
Trying to escape death.
Fighting for their lives.
Watching their siblings die.
Enter Man.

A groggy man has survived being shot by a firing squad
So a soldier walks up to him
Puts a pistol to his head and fires
So the man falls
Fountains of blood pumping up from his head
To Beatles music.

Rows of orange shirted men kneeling
A hooded man behind each one
With sword ready at the throat…

So many horrors.
No fiction.
I wonder what God thinks….

Paul Butters

here we are
chest to chest
wandering slowly out of the untold world of
immeasurable addiction
he's done it again

heavy breathing, messy hair and sweat beads formed on the top of your brow
reveal our very true tale
of The Dance with Two Backs

you lay in absolute silence
so peacefully and elegantly
that
I feel urged follow in your lead
I can't help but begin to admire every crevice and beauty mark
painted across your skin
taking in the moment

your fingers are now interlocked with mine
your eyes are closed and your naked body revealed
I see you clearer than I ever have before
and I am unsure if what I see is even my reality
our reality
it is just too good to be true

why is it that when he gets his satisfaction
he still will not stop until my body shakes with joy
why is it that even after we finish
kissing and caressing each other until day break
he takes a second to grab a hold of my face
to ask if I am okay
really okay

he does not scurry off or make haste to leave my presence
instead
he holds onto my hand
and falls into the deepest sleep
ensuring that our body heats combine into one effortless force of happiness
and while our high is coming down
the love we share continues to rise

I was heartbroken in San Francisco
But it wasn’t San Francisco’s fault
I had been abandoned
And I don’t think I’m being dramatic when I say,
left for dead

Isn’t that how you always feel?
When someone you love abandons you?
Like they wouldn’t care if you died
It’s not their business to care anymore
That’s the beauty in leaving
And the travesty

So I walked up the winding hills
And I took in the beautiful Bay Area
And I stared out at Alcatraz
And I walked along the Golden Gate Bridge
And when I asked my best friend,
How many people do you think have jumped off this bridge?
She said, let’s go home

We took a ferry to Sausalito one day
Where it was just as beautiful
We ordered tacos and margaritas
I couldn’t eat the tacos
I couldn’t eat anything
I was on the heartbreak diet

I tried to mask it,
Lord knows I failed
But I tried

I went to every gay bar I could find
I covered my face in makeup trying to mask the misery
I blasted the happiest song I could think of,
Which was Love Shack, by the B52s
I met a preschool teacher,
She offered me ******* in the bathroom of some bar
I don’t do drugs, but sometimes
You have nothing to lose

When I leave California, I told myself,
I will leave heartbreak behind
I will leave my heart in San Francisco, if you will
But that didn’t work out too well

Because when I got home, it was everywhere
It was in the walls, it was the smell of my own sheets
It was his leftover cigarette butts on my balcony
It was the flannels he bought me
Because I was always shivering at night
And his lighters in my coat pocket
Even the slight slant of my apartment’s floor
That he would always complain about
It wasn’t San Francisco, it was anywhere

Early hours; the
parts of sleep
     recalled;
          a fly opening
        it's silk cocoon,
   a foetus moving
in a jelly womb,
   irises and corneas
         assembling into eyes
                    eager to explore
                a world outside;
      those first times
when regrets are
               abstract concepts
                             not feelings
                        growing roots
       in subconscious pools;
all the things I'd redo,
              my deepest desire
                              to be anew