My voice is nestled within a river
of transitions, positioned
in endless sets of pre- and post-
parentheses. Pre-revolutionary,
post-Missing Link. Post-postmodern,
pre-postmodern revival.

I sit in a somersaulting purgatory
sandwiched between evocation
and paralysis.

My hatred is exhausted, shoulders
hunched over a guillotine,
cursing with its tongue sprawled
dead and dry at an imaginary hunter,
a mass of bones clumped
under the rug I keep pulling
from my own two feet.

Will you hack through this cocoon?

Have you got the muscle
and the patience?

Nevermind that bedtime story.

There must be some wounds
of yours, those placed beyond
the verbal tanline, that need
immediate bandaging.

*Can I get you anything?

I am such
a *******
******.

Been fanning the flames
of my flamboyant faggotry
since April 1990
when I strutted from the caverns
of my mother's....
nevermind,
I'm never touching one of those.

My childhood is exemplified
by late-night espionage treks,
sneaking through my sister's side
of our bedroom
maximized by youthful perspective,
each step of mine garnering more
taut gravity than the next,
finally reaching the Holy Grail:
her Barbie collection.

In the fourth grade, I drew
my interpretations of those
beautiful, diamond-infested drag queens
that rained feathers and sequins
upon one drought of an existence,
the adults framing my tolerance
as a ****-stained abomination.

Now people ponder
why I'm so overt
with my gaydom.

Why argue with your
nostalgia-hemmed family friend
over the cultural significance
of the Barbra Streisand Album,
or gladly sit through marathons
of 1980s ****** camp classics?

It's the kid in me.
Something lost for an era
in a washing tub
of middle school torture tactics,
heavy breathing
over hiding something
so natural.

And a few years of that
are **** stifling enough
for this gigantic ******.

sweeps across the floor
like the hem of a rag
on a doll-faced *****
as the lights are dimmed
in this picket-fenced Attica.

To him, the raindrops taste like whiskey
so who's to blame him
for being a drunkard?

He will not take such condescension,
and so he shall pass it onto you
like a hot potato;
just say the third-degree burns
came from hugging the stove.

For you, life is not a Lifetime movie
looking at your bruises in the mirror
to a Celine Dion power ballad;
the days are a beach of intenstines
set alongside waves of toxic waste,
the moon now a mood ring
sitting atop the knuckles
of your vengeful king.

This decade of brutal purging,
atonement for sins not yet committed,
has felt as consuming
as his figure those Thursday nights
when he's stalking for his property,
and you're close-mouthed
under the bed,
looking through barely a slab
of this virtual reality,
at the iron-****** giant
who would nurse your neuroses
if he'd stop bashing your face in.

Your expectations for the outcome
laced with Disney Princess satin
arrange themselves in a cross-legged noose
(the "O" stands for optimism),
for all this atonement
must be the beaten path
to the Garden of Eden.

You should just remember.
The men still pulled the lever,
licking the flames
as Joan of Arc sang her finale.

There
Is
A
Fly in my drink
And I'm starting to think
That my luck's on the brink
Ever since you told me
That one half of the bed
Seemed a bit more cozy

I soon realize
That I'm not drinking anything
And the poor old fly
Is drowning
In my
Pity party

My gloom made it nauseous
I've become so obnoxious
Since you ****** the life right out of me

I
Hope
You
Choke on the words you said
And the shallow waters that you tread
Are infested with piranhas
That's how it goes if you're not gonna
Live in the presence
Of someone
As holy as me...

I
Tell
The
Leeches hovering around me
That I badmouth you
Just to give Revenge a smile on her face
But here's the simple fact:
Your departure wasn't that bad

It's just that you hurt me
For Christ's sake, you hurt me
I can't believe you hurt me
Can someone stop this hurting?

There
Was
A
Fly in my drink
When I started to wonder
If this entire thing was starting to go under...

It took a hastily-made hangman puzzle
to **** you, a present-day friend
of mine to simply whisper
that three-letter word
as if she were restating the gospel.

Ironic, then, that as you were dying,
I felt an era-long noose loosening.

I remember finding skin pores
mistakenly labelled as sinkholes,
every confession warranting
a "believe me, we knew" after the other.

If you had spent any more time,
an indefinite amount of days
deciding to stay lurking
in the corners of the closet,
out there in the rafters
where no one could hear you
whispering poison into my gut reactions,
I might have sprouted
a kamikaze bloodline,
a raucous rhythm in the ranks
cackling louder with each year
of silence, each span of secrecy.

Although your plastic inflection
vanished with a collective
unlocking of the joints,
your cryptic sentiment still loiters
while my common sense is sleeping,
and I remember to repeat,
three times like Dorothy,
that moment I could only
be my true self on paper.

I want to tell you something
but my lips are flicking sparks
like a lighter draining fluid
and I want to bombard you
with all my ragged knots
of truth but the words
are stuck in traffic
giving each other the finger
ramming bumper to bumper
so they can reach the nearest
exit and my nerves
are a rickety jalopy
almost flipping over
at the sight
of any speedbump
and I'm ripping
at the edges
like the pages
of a Lynch script
because
I want to tell you something

It's been a bit jarring, this stumble into symmetry,
my good senses
               gluing themselves intact
         like an eleventh-hour craft project.

No string sections swelling for this comeback kid--
the just desserts, in this case,
                             arrive in the form
                             of a steady hum
                             that breezes the past away
                     with the ease of a loose eyelash
           flying in a tropical storm.

It took years to embody this equilibrium,
to approach the mid-morning sun
and not recoil from overexposure,
no longer draped in the sweat-soaked robes
                 of secrecy. I have tripped upon a biome
                 of bravery, fallen into the measurements
                 that require no prickly tampering
                 from the rusty, dulled needle
                of a fraudulent tailor.

Nails the length of javelins click on countertop
with the speed of a coked-up woodpecker
as this goddess of the night with bullets
of caked foundation sweating from her forehead
awaits her fifth free Long Island of the night.

Safe to say, she's a little high maintenance,
like all treasured centerpieces
of a local museum deserve to be.

She is your generation's Mona Lisa, trust.
Her sneezes will be dissected for coding.
Like the rust on buried Babylonian armor,
she lives sandwiched between myth and reality.

A Frankenstein of queer iconography,
door-knocker earrings designed by Adrian.

Stilts for heels clack on blinking dancefloor,
balancing a hermaphroditic echo
that charges through hieroglyphic binaries
with a four-on-the-floor precision.

The wind carries stories
listen
Chasing us through burning towns
run
The melting sunset
dusk
Swallows our thoughts
*immersed