Slag Review
​January 2019

For the dear one who said I put AIDS in their ear
 
for one panicked moment, I believed you, believed within a pillar
of fear, doubt, loathing the cries for yet another Devil’s Island

                     my lips traced your salt 
                     found each source & shiver

 oh, beautiful one, I understand fear, do you understand the luxury
of loneliness? You, destined for other arms in other rooms

                    silently my tongue sang your beauty
                    tasting even the lines of your hands

 “The priest shall pronounce them unclean. All the days shall they be
unclean, & they shall dwell alone outside the encampment. & they in
whom the plague is, their clothes shall be rent, head bare, face veiled,
& shall cry out to all who approach, Unclean! Unclean!”

           how easy it is in this life of fiction to fit someone with 
                an iron mask in yet another Tinseltown remake

 Where Levitici meet Dumas, Hollywood circa ‘36, meet Playbill Broadway
gay-boys at Bent, meet Angels in America, meet Rent, meet KS, pneumo-
cystis, CMV, AZT, meet ACT-UP, die-in’s, Silence = Death,  meet the CDC,
T-Cells, CD4’s,  meet seroconversion, sero-segregation, serial comorbidities, adverse events & drug resistance, meet PEP & PrEP, not-you, meet poz-pigs, bug chasers, meet clean & UB2, meet loss & loss & loss, everyone now pieces & parts, meet on-line, on-demand, virtual animations, more tokens please, meet burning effigies spun from AIDS quilts, meet apathy, meet compassion fatigue, meet AIDS is over, meet no one, not you, no one, U=U, none, meet

                     mouthes paralyzed     
                     in endless threnodies

 But… are you clean?  Are you?  Clean?

                    prisoners of our blood, guardians 
                    of our body fluids
​
                                                                                    Unclean, we cry, Unclean