I came of age at the height of the AIDS epidemic,
in the '80s and '90s.
And the only images of gay men I saw
were the skeletal, death-kissed figures on the TV.
And that kind of left a huge psychic and emotional
wound that I really can't talk about in my work,
except in magically real, surreal ways.
"Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome."
"At a quarter to midnight, blue beetles
crawling along the minute hand of the wall clock, I awaken,
panicked, next to my lover, a camel hued cello asleep
on embroidered linen.
A light bulb blazes, burns out--
a does flash of white tail that instructs the fawn
to follow its mother in flight.
I hurry down the hallway, through a door,
into a pasture where mules are grazing.
Moonlight floats in the air like coarse cloth, silver
speckled and woven on the looms of mirrors.
Once I tore into the torso of my cello
and discovered its heart--
a pair of horse shoes caked with red clay.
The mules surround me--
necks bent, nostrils pluming out different lengths of breath.
I toss off my robe.
A mule curls its tongue around my erection.
I throw my head back, and stare at the slowest lightning--
the stars."