Twelve: Fragments

Choose your pain
Carefully

Only sometimes
Can the beautiful houses
By the highway lead you to
Recognize: you’d rather not get it
Than not have it in this
Beautifully designed, artless world

And I am left
To wonder
Where one finds
Comfort today, in a world
Where the only people
Who ever meet IRL
Are barebackers – but,
Of course, the problem
With cumming is
After

The smallworldness of
Everything can only be
Glimpsed at in a foreign city
Or on a pill, and even then
It will only bring you
The comfort of these words:
You will always be
As alone as this

So you turn
To a non-memory of
A real love as you reach
The limit of loneliness, you
Turn to the thought
Of a year of kissing,
You turn to the floor – flat
Against your back – and as tears escape
Your closed eyes and slide
Down your temples, you
Realize: the humanness of me

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