in memory of Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Billy Lucas, and Tyler Clementi

There are those who suffer in plain sight,
there are those who suffer in private.
Nothing but secondhand details:
a last shower, a request for a pen, a tall red oak.

There are those who suffer in private.
The one in Tehachapi, aged 13.
A last shower, a request for a pen, a tall red oak:
he had had enough torment, so he hanged himself.

The one in Tehachapi, aged 13;
the one in Cooks Head, aged 15:
he had had enough torment, so he hanged himself.
He was found by his mother.

The one in Cooks Head, aged 15.
The one in Greensburg, aged 15:
he was found by his mother.
“I love my horses, my club lambs. They are the world to me,”

the one in Greensburg, aged 15,
posted on his profile.
“I love my horses, my club lambs. They are the world to me.”
The words turn and turn on themselves.

Posted on his profile,
“Jumping off the gw bridge sorry”:
the words turn, and turn on themselves,
like the one in New Brunswick, aged 18.

Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.
There are those who suffer in plain sight
like the one in New Brunswick, aged 18.
Nothing but secondhand details.

(Source: poets.org)

the relationship between  
       blackbird and fencepost, between  
the cow and its egret, the field  
       and wildflowers overrunning the field—  
so little depends upon their trust.  

       Here, in God we trust  
to keep our cash and thoughts in line—  
       in the sky, an unexplained white line  
could be the first of many omens.  
       But this is no country for omens,  

the line as chalky as the moon,  
       bleak and useless as the moon  
now rising like a breath of cold air …  
       There is gullibility in the air.

A giant bird-
of-paradise
has climbed the bar:
in this paradise

there are no flowers,
no flowers at all.
When Happy Hour
becomes Last Call—

Adam in drag
our royalty—
we buy her gin
for eternity

(an unseen deejay
scores the years
with pulsing music
of the spheres).

Now the queen has gone,
gone again
in search of love,
in search of sin.

It’s closing time.
You were not at fault.
I drain my glass  
and lick the salt. 

He slid the stiff blade up to my ear:
Oh, fear,

this should have been thirst, a cheapening act.
But I lacked,

as usual, the crucial disbelief. Sticky, cold,
a billfold

wet in my mouth, wrists bound by his belt,
I felt

like the boy in a briny night pool, he who found
the drowned

body, yet still somehow swam with an unknown joy.
That boy.

(via curate)

Gainesville, Florida

An empire of moss,
          dead yellow, and carapace:
that was the season
          of gnats, amyl nitrate, and goddamn
rain; of the gator in the fake lake rolling

his silverish eyes;
          of vice; of Erotica,
give it up and let
          me have my way. And the gin-soaked dread
that an acronym was festering inside.

Love was a doorknob
          statement, a breakneck goodbye—
and the walk of shame
          without shame, the hair disheveled, curl
of Kools, and desolate birds like ampersands…

I re-did my face
          in the bar bathroom, above
the urinal trough.
          I liked it rough. From behind the stall,
Lady Pearl slurred the words: Don’t hold out for love.