Men at Night
the five quarts of my blood moving almost
four miles an hour means the nurse pushing
a morphine shot into my arm watches
my eyes not the needle seconds only
before my head swims in sweet opioids
not so much removing pain but I care
so much less about it — he keeps watching
to see if I might die I think flickers
of the light behind my eyes blinking out
it’s very late at night and I haven’t
slept I stare back just us two in the dark:
I am standing in a park the first night
I hooked up with a stranger there; the back
room video booth of an all-night book
store; the twenty-four-hour men’s bathhouse
on fourteenth street each first time narrowed down
to his eyes and my eyes, how much you trust
him, how much you want what he has, something
about what’s dangerous while the world sleeps
when it feels like the sharp edge of choices
are most keen like the smallest touch the wrong
way can head out breakneck from this dark place
Proof of Life
Here a green tree moving in the sun here
the sun cartwheeling overhead here birds
newborn in a nest here dappled shadows
blinker off and on here the sidewalk flash
of light and dark here the grass up to no
good here the street asleep on the job here
the curb barely makes it through the day here
the crack where the root pushed up here the mud
dried from last night’s rain here the clear hoof print
from something large passing through here a sign
of bigger things than you and me at night
go calmly past our dark windows never
once a thought for if we know or care.
- Two Poems - September 22, 2020
- Three Poems - November 2, 2016
