Sex and Murder Magazine

By Joseph M. Gant

Dark, spinning miracles
the needle of the gramophone
sent wafting down the stairs below.

What is the obsession John? No one
here is sure without one. Tell me all
About your needs, getting high to kill the
pain of coming to bury what remains.
Would you stop and put the shovel down
if you could be the man you weep in secret
lonely spaces just to be? Ashamed of your
birth, to another man's silver screen iconic
cowboy name? No way ever to live up to
that, so Pogo now becomes the talk
of everyone in town- the clown they love,
the clown you hate to have to be. A man
that can't come out, afraid of what they'd say-
no "gay" at home or in this town; just "faggot"
"homo" "fat-fucking-queer." Are these the words
that drive the beast, drive around in search
of what you need to prove them wrong, prove to . . .?

Ironic, John, the monster you have grown,
the clown that you play. Desire just to show
them merely fuels the furnace of your needs.
Everybody love's a clown, but laughter is
ambiguous; it burns either way.
You feel it as you tie the ropes, close
the cuffs, and snuff the screams you just can't bear.
Don't you, John? Do you hear it now? I can.

Was it the sex, the violence, the one and the same,
or pride in secret treasure chests of trophies won-
notches on the six-gun belt, you riding to the
credits. Did you only want to love another
and just let him be, wish others would do
the same? Terrified of truth in words, you
now cover your love with lye. Crying for what
is gone. Your crawl space of a child's game,
a garden where the putrid blossoms grow and
bloom. While decay, love's fertilizer, stakes memories.

Put Pogo in the ground, John. Bury the face
in the worm crawling dirt. Tears of white are falling-
a splattering of grease, lye, and woe running off
your big black shoe. Would you give it up,
even just a while? Listen, John; no one here
is laughing- not the ground, this home, that shovel.
Put it down, cut Pogo loose. Let him
go just once, and so your name would be your own.
And none will ever laugh or poke a joke at you again.