In memory of a friend: activist, writer, queer icon lost to Cancer.
How do you mourn for him?
Who stayed only for a while-
but what was forever;
Who carried a unadulterated smile
and throbbing, piercing pain;
Whose insides the chemo burnt;
but none of his spirit.
Who would want to conquer all:
but little time in his hands.
Who would herald the colors of pride
even when the cancerous inferno raged inside.
“Moon is my lover” , he’d say-
strumming on his uke.
How do you mourn -
the one who loved the moon
and whom the moon loved back?
I need to let you go
believe me, I do know,
but just a little bit longer
Let your memories linger.
In your stories of yonder
Let me sway asunder.
Like on those phone calls
of past – summers, falls.
For one more time
in your breath sublime
let me be drunken
all my senses sunk in.
Into one last embrace
without refrain or grace
take me; like dying ember
watch me dismember.
A poem about changing cities during a pandemic
How to build a home
alone in this unhomely city?
Where winter cloaks the sun
and rancid coal air chokes and burns ;
where dust gathers over clothes and skin.
and death still possess the winds;
where phantoms veiling hands and faces-
scurries past hiding from doom.
