Wrapped like a sprained ankle from head to toe,
                                                                                 locked in glass
In an inconceivable country.

He knows about the destruction caused by reaction:
emotional wounds, self-inflicted, a repeated torture
he brings about, trying to interrogate the self

He doesn’t want anyone to tell him
what color to paint his house nor
how to design it. He grows tired

Walking could hardly concern him.
At his house, though, this topic would be
spoken of as though it were political.

To thrash myself with the knowledge, not
the feeling, that my lover Chris has taken
an Alfred the Great in a very Anglo-Saxon way?

If the man who called you nigger in Dominick’s parking lot
had only dialed 1-800-882-Mary earlier today,
he may have been a better boyscout. I bet

Oh transcendent, this aqua blue and all these health nuts
running back and forth hold nothing—no sea gnome,
no salt to scour your bones clean—only placidity

The day Jim stalked the tomcat between rows of bonsai,
I asked: What kind of gun is that? He said: Air.
And snuffed a squirrel as proof or demonstration.

You were egalitarian with the sleaze you perpetrated, loving
transsexual and coed alike, so shy in your approach, no one
suspected your blue eyes. And when you sat barechested,

Once I thought there was no blue in nature
except the sky—I thought Nature couldn’t make
a blue fiower, or tree, or creature.