Good Boy

Wasn't I a good boy once? Wasn't I
once stripped of body hair and knuckle, a laugh
so clean it stretched like a white sheet on the clothesline?
Wasn't my voice once
the contagious note of a two-finger bell?

The rust in my throat now coats those high-pitch sounds.
If there is a child in me, he hides
behind the dull flint of my hip. Not alive,
not dead, but lost in the stomach
to dissolve like any other

color. Old photographs don't persuade me
that I could have grown into a man
who could love other men with self-restraint,
who would not ask a man to sleep
on the sharp blades of the bed

without complaints. Surely my anger had
always been squatting on its claws, eager
to tear its way out of my ten-year-old ribs.
Then how do you explain this
strange ability to inflict pain?

I must have ingested hatred
through the spoons of my childhood.
I must have been the changeling matured
now longing for things that blister
and boil. Whatever you place in my hand

I want to puncture out
of mischief. Or perhaps the intentional act
of uncoiling comfort is to get
at its irritated heart and confirm that
even the purest odor stings.

Lover, when I drive the nails to your chest
your mouth opens, white
and pasty like a moon. Do you
see me waving back twenty years ago
from the distant planets of my eyes?

Other Victims

Thank heavens for victims who find their way
to folly. They walk on the lean streets in your place
and into a world rich with abuses. Their fates would have
no place to shine if not for that journey, the possible
headlines, and sigh pushed out by the odd relief that

it wasn't you. You are lucky. The man you live with
would never kill you, not in the violent way
other people die, all horror-flick theatrics with costumes
so dirty they could only thrive in other parts of town,
not here in the quiet rooms where your only surprise

is a kiss from behind. If he ever wanted to be rid of you,
your lover would do it kindly: perhaps a poison that falls in love
with your sleep. A compassionate man, he won't let you die
in public, or alone. He won't let you suffer
without him. Never worry. He'll take care of you at home.

The Untimely Return of My Dead

With three loud knocks my dead lover
makes himself known. His first complaints, I suspect:
Why did you change the locks? Why, goddamit,
did you bury me in blue? Makes me look fat, for crissake!

But just as he surprised me with his death,
the dark flower of his hand blooming with the wonder
of its veins exposed-the face in every photograph
stunned by the shout of broken glass-

he surprised me with his untimely return.
More than frightened I feel cheated having
learned to appreciate my skin without
the imposition of his tongue or temper. My touch

now familiar with the act of
touch without reprimand. And lately
even my mouth has begun to overcome its shyness,
welcoming words like a strong flock of swallows

and not like the panic of bats. Three more knocks.
That these walls became my allies in favoring the modesty
of still-life over the conceit of my former lover's nudes
gave me courage to stay in the white

recliner. He gave up ownership when he died in it
and furniture is fickle: the bed
has forgotten its regular load, adjusted to my body
now divorced from the rigor of pretending rest.

The night sweats soaked into the mattress long
evaporated. Unlike my dead lover, I refuse to
choose the day I shock the world. There's no
mystery left in suicide. The challenge is, my love,

to keep yourself awake
despite the sleeping pill doses of sickness and
despair. What simple miracle you could have
learned had you used your ears on me and not

your hands. The knocking stops. I'm relieved
and saddened, that even in his death he cannot piece
himself together. And in the streets his wardrobe runs
away from him, divided among different men.

Breaking Down Picasso's Minotaur

You tell me you're tired of sex,
that with age your balls grew heavy as paperweights
for the dull pendulum of your cock.

The black hair on your chest disappears
quietly. The urge to surprise my sleep
with your tongue's heat has cooled off.

Yes, love, you are getting old,
and I'll remember fondly that taut guitar
in your voice that strummed a thousand

nights. Each song a serenade
to the miracle of my nape's arch
completing the half-circle of your throat

as we locked together in the pleasure
of my being taken from behind.
Your breath pushed into mine

and we reinvented
the direction of the moan.
Remember it. Rehearse the sounds and

erase Picasso's bulls.
You lost yourself inside the Minotaur's
uneven eyes, inside the swollen lip-

rectangular as a trough-
inside the nostrils pressed flat
on the mural of a face.

Exhausted beast.
It will hold its pose until its hide
decays right off the paper.

Death takes no canvas to its
art. How can I still sleep
with you, you ask, when you are

older than my father
and I'm young enough to be
your son? Because, old man,

only you know how to ripen
the night like a pomegranate. The brown
moon of my ass craves your hands.

Hold it firmly like you used to.
Split it open. Grant me
the warm explosion of rubies.