HIV (1994)

Revelation

We tell in strength. “The telling,” when to tell, leads to a discovery

between the teller and the listener. Acquiring knowledge; the teller

holds his/her information as a tool for health, movement towards truth.

II.

Salvation

To converse as an attempt to recuperate, a holding on not to die.

III.

Speech

To acquire “language” for talking about a plague in the self.

IV.

Sharing Secrets

Who to tell? Is there someone? The search for what to tell.

Mature Masculinity

Welcome the responsibility to do the work of building verbs, adjectives

and nouns for mortality and its subsequent eternal breaking of concrete.

I. Revelation

Revel at ion,

rebel at I one a course

to regret erections,

to whip the cream in my scrotum

till it hardens into unsweetened,

unsafe revved elations

of milk turned sour

by the human body,

of propagation of destruction.

The epiphany: I am unsafe,

you who want me

know that I who want you,

harbor the bitter balm of defeat.

II. Salvation

If I were to show you

how to continue holding on,

I would not kiss you,

I would not mix my fluids with yours,

for your salvation

cannot bear the live weight

of your sharing liquids with me.

III. Language

To tell,

to talk,

to tongue into sounds

how I would cleanse you with urine,

how my tasting tongue would wash your body,

how my saliva and sperm would bloat you,

to touch you in our lovemaking

and not tell you

would amount to murder,

to talk about how to language this

so that you would still languish

in my unsafe arms and die,

seems beyond me,

I would almost rather lie

but my tongue muscle moves involuntarily

to tell of the danger in me.

IV. Of Health

To use my full and willing

body to reveal and speak

the strength that I impart

without fear,

without killing,

without taking away what I would give,

to use my man's tongue

to share,

to give,

to lend,

to exact nothing,

to receive all things,

to expand my macho

and let the whole world

into the safety of my mature masculinity.

V. Quarantine

Sometimes I fear touching your plump ear lobes_:

I might contaminate you.

Sometimes I refuse odors that would

drive my hands to open your thick thighs.

Sometimes closing my ears to your voice

wrenches my stomach and I vomit to calm wanting.

Can it be that I am the bearer of plagues?

Am I poison to desire?

Do I have to deny yearning for firm full flesh

so that I’ll not kill what I love?

No juices can flow 'tween you and me.

Quicksand will suck me in.