
Image Credit: Charles Frederick, Una Noche del SIDA, 2018, Courtesy of the artist
last night while I was dreaming
two of my dearest friends (old loves) visited me (needing a place to stay they said as
had once always been so)
(long ago, now, they both had died from AIDS)
they were each in two different rooms each lying in a large bed with brilliantcoolwhitesheets/ in
each room/ lying on suns/ pouring out light (haloes around their aurora of brownandgolden
bodies)
so in each room/ I lay down next to him/ still naked for him
(the way only love can make you and forever naked just to say exposed is far too
innocent and imprecise a word lacking the fullness of all shame all need all eagerness
all that is tender all that is ferocious all that is both fleeting and forever now/ without a
tomorrow without a past)
I held him close/ brushed his red hair with my hand/ kissed his eyelids his brow his ears his nose
his mouth
his neck/ his chest (every ocean beach in the world is a different color and shape
and reason to be/ I noticed absently/
just like every man=s bare geography of chest)
my naked cock (slowly rising like from an underwater depth we existed in a fluid
realm of space and time wherewewerewhere neverwantingmore (never wanting either of
them to go from here) caresses/always going from room to room (we had once been
a trio/ of three boyos) my cock also swelling from within with not blood but the warm water
I noticed in my eyes I was crying
but nowthedream presented me with a problem of impossible logic (I was surprised but I
was always the one relied on/ to find our way out of the labyrinth/ of our caprices) this time I
didn=t know how to solve neither of them knew they had died neither of them knew the
other had died
(neither of them knew death/ as I did with them everynewday
gone)
and I began to wonder first how would I tell them/ shouldn=t they be allowed to know?
but then (suddenly the dream asked) was it true?
(how could it be so/ when their bodies still felt/ so whole and well and aroused in my arms (we
dreamed together) how? since it was still exactly the same as I had always said/ I never wanted
to let them go (we dreamed) their smiles of agreement evolving in expanding concentric/ oval
waves of water/ spreading larger and larger and larger/ even with the coins on their eyes)
the only thing true was the how the way I loved them was the all that would ever be (or ever
true) the I could never
leave the dark fluid space of them/and us/ even though this sleep/ was so full of sorrow/ so full of
dread/ perhaps that was where/ I had always wanted to stay/ in this dream/ regardless of its price/
at least with them/ perhaps too/ in death (and I decided I would never tell them) please don=t
wake me up please please don=t let them/ ever know