This poem is called "Mid-American Tragedy."
And it's based on something that a friend told me
about some people that she knew.
"They want to be their own old vision of mom and dad.
They want their dying son to be eight years old again,
not a gay man, not ill, not dying.
They have accepted him, they would say, if asked,
unlike some who shut errant sons out of house and heart.
And this makes them preen a little, secretly.
But enough of that, some voice within them
whispers, even more secretly.
He's our kid.
Mom and dad are going to give him what all kids long for,
a trip to Disney World.
What fun.
The best Christmas ever.
And he, his wheelchair strung with bottles and tubes, glass
and metal glittering in winter sun, shivers and sweats
and tries to breathe as jingle bells pervades the air.
And his mother, his father chatter and still won't talk,
won't listen, will never listen, never
give him the healing silence in which they
could have heard his questions, his answers, his life at last."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.