Am I Vexed, No
Am I Vexed? No!
Am I vexed to face music? We both are ‘same sex.’
It’s beyond man to fathom the depth of man’s soul
though perhaps a computer (imagined) might spin
all the dreams love might share, why sun’s rainbows arch backs
like a cat, or why butterflies pinned in a box make us dream
we still see them in flight when collection’s their death!
Does a nugget that’s ripped from quartz crystal’s complex
miss the death of its parent, the star it was born of, feel toll
paid by hydrogen gas, that birthed star? Does gold win
that can plumb all the times it has filled a heart’s cracks!
Love grows colder confessed, that’s unable to stream
what heart wants? I’ll denounce this until my last breath!
Am I vexed we’ve both wives with whom each shares his bed,
one eternity’s hourglass suffices such friends?
Let me speak for myself and not dare to presume
who you love, but has love yet been born that is meek?
If you can, tell me please how such love can be love (so restrained),
not erupt in hot rhymes, or ice flows of free verse?
You think tides (moon might raise), or earth’s seasons reverse
(on the axis of globe knocked-off kelter), mean love’s time-constrained?
Is love full strength, or is it diluted; will squeak,
has a voice known to roar? Care can stay in the room
(if there’s good news or bad), gives short shrift to loose ends!
Our time’s brief on this earth! Save love’s honor for Dead?
Brian Johnston
29th of September in 2020
Poet’s Notes:
Craig Wilson is one of my oldest and dearest friends! We first met in
the US Peace Corps teaching 12th Form students at the Sultan Abu Bakar
Secondary School in Kuantan, Malaysia, from 1968-1970. Craig taught
Biology and I taught Physics. Craig gave his class, and mine, a three-day
sex education class (that was not in the Malaysian Syllabus!) near the end
of our two-year PC commitment. Ha!
My friend and I are both getting ‘long in the tooth!’ I’m five years older,
but our contemporaries are becoming fewer in number. I thought, why
should I wait to write Craig a love poem? I might easily pass before him,
and I am so proud to say that I love Craig, a man, period! May the heaven
(that I hope for) or the reincarnation (he dreams of) mean eternities loom
ahead for us both, though I’m (certainly?) far more ‘Right’ than Craig is!
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