my passion

i tried to be as cold as the
church wanted me to be when i was
much younger and they said i
must remove the bellows that fired
the passions of the flesh

in me dwelleth no good thing,
they said, and for years i
flogged my inner yearnings
down into a loathsome pulp

and the homosexuals i knew became
stock characters, with their lisps
and flexed wrists and flash and
bright arrogances

and the girls who unfolded into flower
before me at every turn, in halls
and classrooms and on beaches,
became plastic pieces on a board

and the men and women of the
motion pictures and
the television programs who
joined the flesh of lovers
became unartful and flat

and while what was said by the church
against them was intended to brand
into my heart an impression of the
vileness of their stations
i instead made them all a craved thing

so that emerging from youth
i was something of a submerged brooder,
skulking in a corner, fearful of my mind
making offenses against my truth
and against the people of my life

my best friend, he died alone in a hotel
room, years after confiding in me that
he was gay and that he hurt from being in
the shadow of it, cast by familiar men

and my brother, he died from a tumor that
consumed his brain, months after confiding
in me that he felt he was unfairly
judged for being in life what everyone wished they
could be: unashamedly alive

free and boundless in his passions,
open and groundless in his flights
against the headwinds that buffeted me
for so long and made me hate love
and myself for wanting both

i was once overruled in every way
- as constantly as our revolution
around the sun - by the opinions
of those who had no real investment in me

i've lived a life accepting the
rejections of some and rejecting
the acceptances of others to
the disservice of my inner self

i used to believe that there was no
precision in passion, because it
held no good aim and struck at random
and was not a controllable thing

it was a trifle, something
like waiting for inspiration to
make one's mark on the page, so
therefore not to be taken seriously

wanting and expressing want of the
flesh was cast as a villain; that
desire was subservient to a higher
good, and therefore a dog in the gutter

but since meeting you, i understand the folly
of that: passion is received and spent
as vibrantly as allowed, when people
become people and the scripts of men are burned

and passion is where life flows
best, passion is where life loves
most, passion is where life lances
the boils of the callous cynics

i knew a man with passion who embraced
the essence of what made him feel at
peace, who shunned the preachment of
the fools whose desire was to control

they want nuance and implication when
i write about the act of lovemaking, when
neither exists in the thing itself; they want
that i be quiet with my dark thoughts

but the cock and the labia
nipple and lips are explicit
in the throes and the demand of implication
is just another forced march to church

so close your doors and click
off those lights; draw the blinds and
disrobe in your darkness with an
object-of-affection, your trapped lover

shun those who dare expose themselves
to the true natures of their beings;
tell the world how it is them
against us on our way to salvation

but i will not: my passion is naked
and raw and alive and truthful and
unashamedly in flight, accepting
of what i was naturally imbued with

because in me dwelleth all good
and in my friend
and brother
and you