Diet

1.

Two Lies:
Doing my gig at Crystal Pistol
I was, clowning around
said I was getting beat up in Kindergarten
I was cutting out orange pumpkins crooked but
I don't know for sure when it started
the fear and shallow breath
things thrown
knocked down
the room spinning

No happiness no permission
A paranoiac ruling a home
Nuclear family life is a
horrible accident
I don't remember

Second lie
said I couldn't forgive my
alcoholic married guitarist I had an affair with for a year
buy yeah, I can
sort of

I went over the top is what I did
clowning around
for that gorgeous audience and
Diet
big blotchy crazy homo I me him when I was 17, dancing at the
Stud, wearing leather pants and a bulky maxi pad
he had seen me screaming in my band
trying to keep my fun

he jabbered, complicated bla bla bla
darted a look in my crazy eyes,
asked me to dance and we danced some
sixties dancing, go go dancing
violent dancing
serious dancing

I took him bakc to my apartment we
lay down on my only possession, my King size bed
no, I'm lying again I had a keyboard and an amp too
my mother bought them with a good chunk of a puny
divorce settlement
we laughed at the small amount buying a hundred dollar trenchcoat
music equipment
and a silver spaghetti strap gown
then my sister got a job and I got this big bed too
sleep is very very important

2.
We lay on the bed and
told each other because of the blood we just couldn't
excusing each other
sometimes Diet tricked me into being taken
care of later
I couldn't go out until he brought me a
orange shake from Miz Browns
Fish and Chips with Malt vinegar from Larkin Street
When I couldn't get over unless I hustled a little
he gave me elaborate moral permission.
He sounded right, a
psychopathic brilliant Irish Catholic homosexual from
Pittsfield, Massachusetts, one in a thousand Mikel Collins
volumes, tomes, of reasons and
he sounded right
he listened through my man obsession
my wretched attempts to be straight
went to New York with Remix
came back yellow
screamed bloody murder every year or so when I
tried to back off
why did every party guest have to live up to these fucking
standards of his
from child rape by fathers friends
part of a nuclear trade, the one gay
theater bar in Pittsfield
listening to Broadway anecdotes as if his life
depended on it
some kind of blotchy sweater queen good at science,
his father said
do anything just don't end up like me and then died on
a factory plan
so he worked in sex boutiques with no pension plan
telemarketed garbage bags for handicapped Vietnam Vets,
tickets for the Oakland ballet,
now AIDs survey and the theater
enough is enough but like a pit bull he never let me go

Dying now
a few are leaving fast
we fucked up
link radioactive fallout and
diseases of the immune system atomic power
and weapons programs I stopped being a
feminist in Junior High
when Billie Jean King lost the tennis match
and Bobbie Riggs was funnier anyway
so forgive me for saying they sound like boy things

and also for being far away
in a microsecond I figured out who you were
the afflicted beautiful dying pierced British boy
who throws up blood all night
and go go dances
we can't waste time before we talk anymore
atomic power and weapons programs

I give it up
If I can
hold back sometimes
breathe funny and shallow,
smile, nod, listen to the addled and go away
surround me with big wooden old furniture
designed before we felt the end
wait for me

in the middle of a complicated and
fruity morality tableau
told in a
beer soaked commercial zone
I'll be there
I only get embarrassed in private
really
It's kind of like a
weapons programs
atomic power
and nuclear family
thing