Burning

I: Three Voices

You're jealous of the music, his music.
What is wisdom? I've read the dictionary
e'en though I can't read. I read it three times.
Numbers are more than music, more than words.
X is Roman, and V and Z.
Not D, D is Deuteronomy.
Older than Roman. Yeah, it is.
Hebrew too, that sea, wisdom.
You eat, you dance, you sleep,
that's how it happened.
I am, I'm gonna be a millionaire.
And species and subspecies, human sub-SPE-cies.
I'm repealed. Someone should make this a study.

He loves you and you love him so
just get over it and cruise because
he's always gonna and you're gonna
and let's dance this is disco
remember loosen up loosen up looser
and think of ME once in a while.

It isn't time for eulogies
nor grandeloquence but I must
write of my dearest compatriot, his diagnosis.
This unjust disease conjures unjust thought:
Why not that obese senior citizen
or that stranger, or invalids? No one!
Why not me who has had fears since longer back
and more often? I'll be the one missing someone,
living on, so I cry. He doesn't.
"Later," he says. I understand for
the first time what it means to be strong,
not for yourself but the other.
Not Dean! My Dean Moriarity, Neal Cassady to
my Kerouac, Kerouac, Chris, to my Ginsberg, my Victor.
We've known each other over half our lives,
YOU CAN'T CHANGE THAT FRACTION!
Words I do not love more than him fail.

II: One Body

The diarrhea flatus smog of L.A. is an omen,
the chronic cough and silken tongue of New York is another,
not to mention lesions of hate from Maine to Mesa, Arizona.
Nor the sweat of fear each night that is Yellowstone burning,
nor the oil spills of opportunistic infections on all sides.
No recourse, relief, excuses. A death
disgusting and noble. No, only disgusting.

Oh, over
say can you
there
we shall over
come here
shall overin
overindulge
overinundated with
overtime, overstim
I know!
stimulation.

Because numbers are bigger
than words groups of fifty
can seem like nine thousand
resounding resounding.

Party to the nightmare
pinacle we: cocaine babies,
abused child and suicide, obscene
America, this is not
what I see on prime time television.
Maybe it's all a bad Jason movie
like that now on tv (today's villians
reflect today's dangers: unexpected,
unreal). Maybe a hierarchy. Maybe a cure.
Dean just left displaying symptoms.
My lover gets his test results today.
Line up
behind me
who will not give in.
The everyday reality
and metaphor of AIDS
has scarred my brain,
is all-encroaching.
Then he shaved in case
he dies tonight.

III: Two Minds

Bricks edify
while crotches kidnap
attention
pure detailed pectorals
best bearded they
yet bricks edify.
Lusty elixer
meant for moon and
dark, sharp nakedness
near. Words convey
orgasm, sex itself, but not
the calm
petting after (pictures
portray beauty and lust
but miss the soul and need of nudity.)
Three men in water, muscles rippled
like sleek waves,
six legs fish firm
and arms strong oars
river-plunging,
fingers into the sunset, hair
dark and matted
onto the forehead like morning.
Nude stands to dry
and the air auras him singing
perhaps or humming some
popular song. Anthems to beauty -
I ogle them often and anytime.

Evening news reruns
while my own mortality
infests me and my
lost belief in poetry
marriage environmental abuse
bomb happiness and poverty
3 a.m. traffic accidents.
There's no such thing as
blood nor lymph nodes,
no such rock, no Paris,
nor candlelight, no emergency.

Some HIV positives
develop AIDS and
do others not?