Lost Weekend

R.M. Vaughan
From:   Invisible To Predators. ECW Press, Fall 1999.

a playwaltz, boy to boy    only friends dance so stiffly
the last two stretches of skin left secret between us    tangle and frisk
- an accident of thighs and American love songs    blurts stories
3 years of conversation never touched on -

a Saturday with tulips and fobbed apologies    both cut at the base
   please, get to the subject (me)    I can understand any kind of love
except foolish delicacy
all mouths accept honey, all eyes take to red petals    hold me, hold me
in your arms and underestimate me

fast dancing, we boys make a near perfect circle, agreeing to its stupidity
to the safety of no partners and hours of drink
- in another context we're a gang, a frat, the way new inlaws dance and
clap because talking is impossible -
   to notice our cocks all face the empty centre, to notice no boy spins
his backside to his opposite    to notice this is indeed a choreography
marks difference no music drowns

a Tuesday and his rigidity clears the air       shy on the phone, he sings
her body electric and I could kill him because intimacy is like a good
slap       you have to get close to smart and the touch is quick,
noncommittal       fly blown

forgive me    I thought throwing our bodies together at high speeds
meant something    meant me     in shiftless midmorning, pulling
on a pushed-off shirt, me shitting quietly, me engaged by his bookshelf
because I already read his mind   me, skanky from cum   wanting home

forgive me    I misread his sweat, mistook the press of his fingers
for Morse code    squirreled his spit under the fat of my cheek
like hard candy    took the flag and ran and held out my hand for the next
flash of primary colour and satin to see only air    only my own keys
too early to touch and iron-caked like old pennies    just as useless

I will replay this night over and soon      I'm replaying it now
because I don't believe in perspective or two-headed kings;
there is Courage, and there is not

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

R.M. Vaughan's works copyright © to the author.