across the pond,

I lived off the diet of
some 55 year old bachelor
racing towards the past
only, I looked forward to
so much more than
my mother's improved health.

I would find books and read them
laying them vulnerable and bare
to my devouring mind. (I swear
to god, there's an approachable
Minotaur among my grey matter.)

I skipped Barcelona with an alcoholic
to research gay fascists and history's
slaughter benches. I hand-wrote that paper
just so I could feel something at work besides
strong coffee and false anxieties about projected moments.

I raised my hand, countless times
in foreign classes with tobacco residue
creased to my sheet paper. While others
slept or day-dreamed about the pigeon **** outside
but I smiled at the professor, & mommy and daddy sent them
capitalist notes with the appearance of life.

I met a girl, who got to know me through
all five senses, at once. Speaking more languages
than half this world is aware of, I danced til my flight
departed and I knew which city was my favorite, because
I knew nothing of it going in and having no expectations
opens me like an oyster whose made multiple pearls.

I lost my scarf there, in Italy,
a beautiful one with conversational brilliance
falling to disappearance on my final night, after the rains
of Tuscany had drenched away my need for movement
and the winds of Ventotene had me sailing with
men, I knew nothing of. After I cried on the floor
over the beauty of Hegel and Marx and fell into
Nebulae of epiphanies.


across the pond, my life had verve.