The following two poems were read at the Gay Pride Celebration 

in the Ellington Room on June 23rd 2023. 

Confessions of a Town Crier

 

I was 6 the first time I cried at the cinema. 

I wept so hard the sobbing impaired my vision, 

so hard that my poor mother leaned over 

and asked if we should leave.

She thought I was unhappy, but I wasn’t.

Not at all. 

The minute the movie was over 

I wanted to feel whatever that was 

all over again.

 

So began my love affair with 

crying amongst strangers in the dark. 

I don’t mean being reduced to tears,

because that’s no reduction.

Crying for art is an honor. 

It’s applause with mucus and salt. 

I suppose it falls to the actors themselves

to guide us away from any awkwardness

we might harbor over  their

dissolving us into tears.

The willingness to be vulnerable before the world:

a kind of ritual sacrifice.

Tears as holy water.

I’m thinking of that lone tear that Denzel Washington

releases as he’s whipped in “Glory”;

two centuries of exploitation in a rivulet 

of vicarious mortification.

  

Less and less we are attending

the cathedrals of crying. 

Instead, I fear we’re numbing ourselves. 

Even our lacrimal surrogates in Hollywood 

have been turning their backs on us

towards age-defying procedures that 

culminate in faces that can no longer 

approximate our sorrow. 

I see a crisis of deadening being passed down…

Why are we running from ourselves?

Evading the inevitability of emotional difficulty?

What if my mother had yanked us up that day

at “E.T.” and insisted that a boy inconsolably weeping

was somehow inappropriate? 

What other beauty would I have become dead to? 

What truths?

 

When my dog died I cried so loud 

I worried my neighbors might call the police: 

It’s a peculiar experience, crying that way: 

undammed, with your entire self, 

with everything in you, roaring out. 

If crying distinguishes us from the animals,

it also arouses the animal IN us. 

I didn’t know such a creature, 

a werewolf in my case, 

resided in there. 

Not a hulk but a hurt. 

You won’t find it on your “to do” list.

In other words you don’t access it. 

The wolf finds you. 

It proceeds to drag immense sorrow

through the tiny openings

of your nostrils, eyes, and mouth. 

Its release as healing as any peel of laughter.

Think of all that’s happened to us

in the last few years.

 

I think it’s the animal inside us that needs to speak now…to cry out.

IT’S waiting, ready for a mass howling. 

I know I’m ready, what about you?

 Never Give a Cat a Woman’s Name

 (for Clementyne)

My cat and I have agreed not to love each other.

It’s better that way. No really.

The very touch of her fur disturbs my equilibrium,

nothing should feel that soft 

and abruptly walk away. 

Eyes that seem to stare through you 

can hardly be trusted.

She’s got a face like a sarcastic Mona Lisa, 

there’s no telling what she’s thinking

at any given moment.

She whines about everything 

yet couldn’t care less what’s troubling me.

She doesn’t consciously overlook my problems, 

she ignores them. 

I bet Selfishness is her religion, 

the hell with all that’s holy.

She probably prays to her water dish.

She’s above wearing jewelry 

as she is her own accessory.

She sticks every landing like a gymnast 

executing a heist. 

She licks herself as if her whole body were an open wound.

The look in her eyes says: You did this to me.

Frankly I’m tired of putting her on a pedestal

because she always lets me know she couldn’t care less. 

I suspect she has many Gods, 

but I’m sure I’m not one of them.

God of sunlight on the floor. God of the insides of shoes.

God of sideways Trader Joe bags.

God of dark spaces. God of the red laser dot.

My GOD.

She wakes me every morning 

with an agitated call to arms.

I might as well have joined the army.

Bugles are more delicate than her barking orders.

So then why…WHY does my heart melt at the mere thought of her name.

My darling Clementyne.