a literary type from manila - a charlatan, really - wheedled me into talking poetry in one of these mindless new york gay pride weekend parties, of all places.
"poetry is my passion," he said, "but sex, great sex, is really what i need."
it took me a while to shake off the crudity of his advances. and in a hot summer night such as this, i, as my wont when i was the slothful and easily creeped out kid in the island i grew up in, crept up to a cool, breezy spot. tonight, it was the one near the dj's dais, where an industrial fan was asserting its own rhythms. watching this heaving mass of sweaty bodies, i hardly moved a single sinew. i just stood there, and stood, and stood, and stood.
the poet w.h. auden once immodestly dismissed poetry as that which "makes nothing happen." what a showoff, this auden guy was. (just like these impossibly cut cute boys dancing.) for after all, all good stuff comes from nothing, really.
as i stood there amid all this stir, this heat, my pause, my absolutely doing nothing, could be a mark, a line in a blistering summer sand. one from where, as always the island boy that i am, i, wearing nothing at all, could jump off into the refreshing, the tonic sea, away from the roil of all this dissembling. and perhaps, to come out of the water later wet with a sparkling emotional wisdom, ready to make an honest thing happen.
