Forever
Friday was big
data night,
the gig:
athletics
and analytics,
acute
age disparity,
Brut,
and faking
I mean fucking
autocorrect.
For clarity.
We came
correct.
Brunch?
Details.
We adored
potatoes
made with fallen
wild parrots.
Cocktails
at Holy Mountain
named for
dictators!
Twenty-four
carats.
I ordered
the Stalin.
Tan blonds
in tight jeans,
featuring basket,
meet
on Valencia Street—
years ago
this was mortuary row,
the dead above,
the dead below.
Nothing shows love,
morticians say
but never say,
like a bronze
casket.
The boy-band
in a booth
onstage,
oozing
rage?
Cruising
is a sidelong
look
at a lifelong
souk.
The truth
comes out
like trout
in the hand.
Nothing
is forever.
Traffic.
Forever
is just a weekend,
more
or less,
a star’s
ghost wrote.
The night,
cool as a store.
Green
as a pornographic
door.
Extra
May 6, 2016
I was an extra.
A serious
gay miniseries
for the network.
They wanted to cast
a “hot guy”:
makeout
scene;
civil-
rights queen.
Apparently,
I was “almost there.”
At last.
Makeup
set to work
on the backup:
painting my head
to give me hair.
Goodbye, pate—
I waited
outside
the Castro Theater
with the drag star
Pollo Del Mar.
(They pulled
me aside:
no need
to be Plan B.)
It may
have hurt.
But the writer/
director—
a suspiciously
boyish
Oscar winner
famous
for his
online
bareback
pics—
suggested
I lose my
shirt,
for background.
Consolation
on location.
I came
around.
Alternate
Hot Guy?
He actually asked.
You’re finished.
Rhapsody
1.
Pollen.
Fallen
on
men
like soot,
snow,
ash,
cash.
Avoidance
of eye
contact.
I
redact
any chance
in advance.
2.
Mottled
sheets;
bottled
dets.
Since
when
is urban
hiking?
Get off
my
intellectual
property.
The fog
a feral
dog.
3.
Recession:
hairline,
gumline.
Bread-
line.
Passive
regression.
He played
the pup;
he played
tricks.
Politics
the infamous
stray
under the bed.
4.
Night,
a sex
site
of white
boys
with an
aversion
to latex.
Or a version
of that.
I bet
not one
of them
has ever
shat.
5.
We pause
to disarticulate
our jaws.
Living
Dead
giving
head.
Backdoor
Chip,
my step-
hipster,
my go-
go:
find her
on Grindr.
6.
Numbers
in love,
affairs
with shares:
big pharma.
Our age
a gag,
a mouthful
of knowledge.
Fierce.
Karma
is workin’
a Birkin
colostomy
bag.
7.
He held
an associate’s
degree
in manipulation.
His existence,
consonants;
the vowels
like bowels,
no movement.
Beat off,
he yelled;
I think
he meant
buzz.
I did both.
8.
I resist
the urge
to rhapsodize:
boys
in blue
pills;
the poor;
the purge.
Honor
kills.
At least
his
“grooming
injury”
was “minor.”
9.
It was:
the butt-
dial
of relationships;
two ships;
philosophy
& pot
brownies
with townies;
a half-
mile
from
thought.
It was
not.
10.
I do
as I
am told.
When
he blinks
I call;
when
he smiles
I fold.
I do
it on
a dime.
What’s
a dime?
Old.
11.
Nail
& donut
& dildo
shops:
a full
life.
Become
the dead.
And yet.
Sunset;
pre-cum—
spread
with
a dull
knife.
Photo credit: Josh Koll