PRD: What did you think of the dinner?
PREY: I really don’t know how to answer that
PRD: Did you get new glasses?
PREY: I keep having this dream where I go to touch you and your whole body falls apart right in front of me. I'm screaming and screaming but then you somehow turn into a lake. I swim in it for ages and I wake up crying because even though it was a dream there is no way to make the feeling un-real

shuffling is heard. A drawer opens and closes

PREY: What are you going to do with that?
PRD: I’m going to shut you up
PREY: please please do

We were taken out back
Our blood painted the alleyways
History books called us the best of friends
So many beautiful love stories have been erased
So many of us died in hospital beds
While our immunity wasted away
And the government couldn’t care less
About the loss of a life if you were gay
And if you think that the fight ended in 2015
Then you’re deluding yourself, hate’s still alive today

But I won’t spend another day in the closet
So you can feel more comfortable
My existence isn’t a problem
Burning forever’s not the solution
I’m not sorry that pronouns
Are hard to wrap your brain around
I’m not lost or confused
I’m finally standing proud

I’m not sorry that there’s a month that’s not about you
I’m not sorry living my life the way I want to
Makes you feel so oppressed
Why are you so upset
Why are you so obsessed
With misgendering that man
Because he was born with *******
Why do you detest us

This has nothing to do with you
Just because my sexuality is different
Doesn’t mean yours has to change too
Just because I’m comfortable with he/they
Doesn’t make you going by he/him any less okay
What’s your ******* problem
Get off of my back
And stop pretending
When May is ending
That you’re under attack

I’m done repeating myself
It’s a strain on my mental health
To try to explain something
To someone
Who has no will to learn themself
This has nothing to do with you
So take a step aside
And let us enjoy being free
And encourage each other for future battles
I’m not asking
With or without your compliance
We will not hide
Because this is pride

Although this is ostensibly about shoelaces, times tables and swans in Prague...it is obviously a love poem for me Da....now that I can't bring him anywhere...I bring him everywhere.

7 TIMES 7 IS...?

When I was four
I fretted

over things I couldn't do
like tie my tie...tie my shoe

laces were
beyond me

as were such things as
7 times 7 is.  . ?

My Da  would get it right
Every time...I'd...eh...forget.

Or he would tie my laces
so they couldn't come undone.

Or do me a splendid
Windsor knot.

For the life of me I
simply could - not.

And when I grew up to be
5

would I know by then
maybe...by 10.

Was never sure
about being sure.

Ties...laces...times tables
defeating me.

My father all love
and hugs and smiles.

Now them...them I
could do.

And my father could
pin a river down

a blue line flowing
in an atlas

watching it wriggle
under his thumb.

"Vltava!"
he'd command it

and it would pause
to listen to its name.

He told me the river
lived in Prague

and that was somewhere
I...forget.

And here I am at almost 64
gazing at the Vltava in person.

Know it for what
it is

and all its swans
all its swans.

I even now where
Prague is now.

I stand in its
December.

My father who art in Heaven
I pray to you

as I used to do
when I was 2.

You better
than any God

I could ever
imagine.

So here I be in Praha
watching the waters

of the Vltava
repeating a Czech tongue twister

laughing at its absence
of vowels.

"Prd krt skrz drn, zprv zhlt hrst zrn!""
What a howl!

Still have trouble with
those ****** laces.

My wife laughs as
they come undone and. . .come undone.

**** them!
**** them!

Can only make a bad stab
at a Windsor knot.

Get by by
not wearing a tie.

Hugs and loves
and smiles?

I know them
by heart.

I hug you
in my mind's eye.

Know now
that 7 times 7

is and always will be.

*

Prd krt skrz drn, zprv zhlt hrst zrn!

A mole farted through grass, having swallowed a handful of grain

7 TIMES 7 IS...?

When I was four
I fretted

over things I couldn't do
like tie my tie...tie my shoe

laces were
beyond me

as were such things as
7 times 7 is.  . ?

My Da  would get it right
Every time...I'd...eh...forget.

Or he would tie my laces
so they couldn't come undone.

Or do me a splendid
Windsor knot.

For the life of me I
simply could - not.

And when I grew up to be
5

would I know by then
maybe...by 10.

Was never sure
about being sure.

Ties...laces...times tables
defeating me.

My father all love
and hugs and smiles.

Now them...them I
could do.

And my father could
pin a river down

a blue line flowing
in an atlas

watching it wriggle
under his thumb.

"Vltava!"
he'd command it

and it would pause
to listen to its name.

He told me the river
lived in Prague

and that was somewhere
I...forget.

And here I am at almost 64
gazing at the Vltava in person.

Know it for what
it is

and all its swans
all its swans.

I even now where
Prague is now.

I stand in its
December.

My father who art in Heaven
I pray to you

as I used to do
when I was 2.

You better
than any God

I could ever
imagine.

So here I be in Praha
watching the waters

of the Vltava
repeating a Czech tongue twister

laughing at its absence
of vowels.

"Prd krt skrz drn, zprv zhlt hrst zrn!"" *
What a howl!

Still have trouble with
those ****** laces.

My wife laughs as
they come undone and. . .come undone.

**** them!
**** them!

Can only make a bad stab
at a Windsor knot.

Get by by
not wearing a tie.

Hugs and loves
and smiles?

I know them
by heart.

I hug you
in my mind's eye.

Know now
that 7 times 7

is and always will be.
. . .