Gene
He’s dead now, my friend of long ago.Time has caught up with us, him sooner,But I’m not far behind—just take a look,Wrinkles and creases and stars in my eyes,Remembering desire is from LatinMeaning “with the stars,” as I fill with longingThat makes youthful hots a drop in the bucket…Oh, I would go if starships came for me.
We would catch catfish Saturday mornings,Cutting holes in abandoned tires, sinking themOff the pier with a wire to fetch them up.Out would slap and flop a big old whisker-headWe’d try to kill with a couple two-by-four’s.More often than not the slimy dinosaur Would hurl himself up and back into the lake—We would laugh and swear at him so manfully.
Boys are clueless, that’s for sure. We pretendedWe could ignore our dicks, but we knew better.They were always hard, and we always fellTo talking about girls and what we would doIf only we could get one off in the bushes.But no way church boys like us could feel one upWe were so scared of the alien speciesWho let the older boys do what they wanted.
Later he had an old Volkswagen bugAnd we’d go riding on Saturday nights,Out all hours swapping jokes and eating ’cue, Mountains of it for teenage appetites,It tasted so good—but it wasn’t the meatWe were hungry for and stayed hungry forAs long as the spark survived under the liesThey buried us in boys still alive. Of course, we know pleasure is fraught with perilAnd evolution offers no escape.Even sublimation ultimately murders.But to gouge the stars out of youthful eyesAnd shackle the body in a so-called soul,Which women allegedly do not possess,Is to force nature to feed on its entrailsAnd deprive all life of a home to love.
He’s dead now, my friend of long ago.Time has caught up with us, him sooner,But I’m not far behind—just take a look,Wrinkles and creases and stars in my eyes,Remembering desire is from LatinMeaning “with the stars,” as I fill with longingThat makes youthful hots a drop in the bucket…Oh, I would go if starships came for me.
We would catch catfish Saturday mornings,Cutting holes in abandoned tires, sinking themOff the pier with a wire to fetch them up.Out would slap and flop a big old whisker-headWe’d try to kill with a couple two-by-four’s.More often than not the slimy dinosaur Would hurl himself up and back into the lake—We would laugh and swear at him so manfully.
Boys are clueless, that’s for sure. We pretendedWe could ignore our dicks, but we knew better.They were always hard, and we always fellTo talking about girls and what we would doIf only we could get one off in the bushes.But no way church boys like us could feel one upWe were so scared of the alien speciesWho let the older boys do what they wanted.
Later he had an old Volkswagen bugAnd we’d go riding on Saturday nights,Out all hours swapping jokes and eating ’cue, Mountains of it for teenage appetites,It tasted so good—but it wasn’t the meatWe were hungry for and stayed hungry forAs long as the spark survived under the liesThey buried us in boys still alive. Of course, we know pleasure is fraught with perilAnd evolution offers no escape.Even sublimation ultimately murders.But to gouge the stars out of youthful eyesAnd shackle the body in a so-called soul,Which women allegedly do not possess,Is to force nature to feed on its entrailsAnd deprive all life of a home to love.
We knew. We understood. Young but not stupid.What we never understood is hatred.Our fathers and brothers fought in the wars,But they weren’t full of hatred, only sadness.Their sadness left them mute, too crippled to share.They were ashamed to admit they’d been dupedAnd fought for lies that enslaved their childrenTo the greed of tyrants and poof-ed-up pseudo-gods.
They left us to fish off piers with worn-out tiresAnd to figure out our dicks for ourselves.They could have talked to us—it might have worked.They could have taught us women are people, too,Full of desire and intelligent, as well,But the lies had eaten them all alive,And they could not fish us out of the sewerHypocrisy farms to feed the vicious few.
I met him one last time. We also were sad.Chatted and smiled and walked away. Near the endHe suffered dementia, but in this photoFilled with wonder, I see the stars in his eyes.
They left us to fish off piers with worn-out tiresAnd to figure out our dicks for ourselves.They could have talked to us—it might have worked.They could have taught us women are people, too,Full of desire and intelligent, as well,But the lies had eaten them all alive,And they could not fish us out of the sewerHypocrisy farms to feed the vicious few.
I met him one last time. We also were sad.Chatted and smiled and walked away. Near the endHe suffered dementia, but in this photoFilled with wonder, I see the stars in his eyes.