HIV

I.
Revelation

We tell in strength. “The telling,” when to tell, leads to a discovery
between the teller and the listener. Acquiring knowledge; the teller
holds his/her information as a tool for health, movement towards truth.

II.
Salvation

To converse as an attempt to recuperate, a holding on not to die.

III.
Speech

To acquire “language” for talking about a plague in the self.

IV.
Sharing Secrets
Who to tell? Is there someone? The search for what to tell.

V.
Mature Masculinity
Welcome the responsibility to do the work of building verbs, adjectives
and nouns for mortality and its subsequent eternal breaking of concrete.

I. Revelation
Revel at ion,
rebel at I one a course
to regret erections,
to whip the cream in my scrotum
till it hardens into unsweetened,
unsafe revved elations
of milk turned sour
by the human body,
of propagation of destruction.
The epiphany: I am unsafe,
you who want me
know that I who want you,
harbor the bitter balm of defeat.

II. Salvation
If I were to show you
how to continue holding on,
I would not kiss you,
I would not mix my fluids with yours,
for your salvation
cannot bear the live weight
of your sharing liquids with me.

III. Language
To tell,
to talk,
to tongue into sounds
how I would cleanse you with urine,
how my tasting tongue would wash your body,
how my saliva and sperm would bloat you,
to touch you in our lovemaking
and not tell you
would amount to murder,
to talk about how to language this
so that you would still languish
in my unsafe arms and die,
seems beyond me,
I would almost rather lie
but my tongue muscle moves involuntarily
to tell of the danger in me.

IV. Of Health
To use my full and willing
body to reveal and speak
the strength that I impart
without fear,
without killing,
without taking away what I would give,
to use my man’s tongue
to share,
to give,
to lend,
to exact nothing,
to receive all things,
to expand my macho
and let the whole world
into the safety of my mature masculinity.

V. Quarantine
Sometimes I fear touching your plump ear lobes:
I might contaminate you.
Sometimes I refuse odors that would
drive my hands to open your thick thighs.
Sometimes closing my ears to your voice
wrenches my stomach and I vomit to calm wanting.
Can it be that I am the bearer of plagues?
Am I poison to desire?
Do I have to deny yearning for firm full flesh
so that I’ll not kill what I love?
No juices can flow ‘tween you and me.
Quicksand will suck me in.