A meeting of two old friends

[vaneramos]

You want me to feel you again
and play doubting Thomas
like doctor in the secret garden.
Maybe we should check my own unhealed wounds.
My hands, my side.

Here:
My genitals, you must have bitten
hard those thirteen years of manhood lost.
Growing back was a miracle.

Finally I became—we became men together,
at last at the tip
the touch of eternity burning my glans
firing, streaming,
screaming across heavens
a vast unbelief
tearing clouds of fraud
that blocked our eyes.

Truth scrolled up
and crashed on the schoolroom floor.
At once a child again
my only original sin
was being born to a world of churches.
What I really wanted
(how I hated myself)
was x-ray eyes to see
how another boy looked
inside his shame.
To crawl within tenderness
bruised, surrounding, pooling tears.

A lion, you tore away limbs and flesh,
my whole skin a scab
the scales of Eustace.
The creatures cried "Faggot!"
in the voice of a lion
and innocence scorched like silk in dragon's breath,
curling, wafting on smoke.

Sometime earlier, later,
you hung there suffering, you did,
no longer, not yet a lion.
We met in Gethsemane years ago
and wept together in darkness.
Minds across centuries, empty ages defied.

I put my hand in your wound,
you yours in mine.

Then we popped olives
in one another's mouths,
fell laughing amongst the lilies.
The moon rode high
on the flow of our desire
milky, shining with a burst from shrouded sky.
We came together, we groaned and cried.

Under dappled silver
I slept at your shoulder
you whispered me dreams.
At dawn I departed:
a new journey
without betrayal.

Remember that?
And you want to feel it again.


Based on a free_write post earlier this afternoon. My thoughts took me by surprise. This poem asked to be written.