Grants, New Mexico
that day in san francisco you picked me up on the bike after work/ i still had a normal job back then/ editing a magazine/ the entire staff went quickly to the windows to see you, 2stare/ you had consciously chosen to not wear a shirt good for you/ tits to the wind/ i was so exhausted with struggling with those people/ you were the one who informed me that they all hated me, and i chewed on it/ i believed you/ mainly because it was true, and we were getting 50 miles per gallon if the two of us were on the bike/ i took my shirt off, too, and threw it into the street/ i got on the back of the bike, and we peeled out of there/ moonlit chariots of great kings/ tombs of treasure sought at midnight, shoulders dappled by the sun/ the beds in cheap motels and dreams/ other people said we were sullen, but i would never have called it that/ most men come back to the dull, most men find themselves consumed in the families of the dull, most men are numbed by the dull/ dull bicycle streets, dull suburban lawns of grass/ dull lawnmowers/ dull wives/ dull children/ dull schools/ dull jobs, dull secret sleeping pills/ dull friends/ dull syndromes, dull stuff, dull sex, and you’d think dull was a commodity because it was/ you put high heels on your wife while you fucked her and called it racy racy is as racy does and the dullness of life was life itself/ so why the fuck are you here/ on rt #66, the franciscan motel in grants, new mexico, had rooms with aluminum foil taped to the window in case you wanted it dark and we wanted it dark because we were dark/ darker, darkest/ everyone but us arrived at the motel pulling uhaul trailers/ the clothes on our back and a camera/ that was about it/ if we walked through denny’s, the straight cowboy types would look cautiously at our butts, and then look furtively away/ you trained me in how to cock tease straight men who had no idea about what they were missing in the tongue tasting of your shit hole like mellow apples and medicine in a hot room and the swooping howl of the wind outside/