From “Beautiful Boyfriend”

For Don (1958–2011) My skiff is made of spicewood       my oars are Cassia bract Music flows      from bow to starboard Early Mozart     cool side of  Coltrane   and miles and miles     of   Miles Cheap Californian Merlot       and my young boyfriend • If   I could master      the nine doors of my body And close my heart       to the cries of   suffering Perhaps     I could love you like no other Float my mind      toward the other side of   hate • The shanty towns of   Tijuana       sing for you The slums of   Little Sudan       hold evening prayer One dead brown boy is a tragedy Ten thousand is a statistic So let’s fuck    my love       until the dogs pass • All beautiful boyfriends are transitory They have no souls     they’re shiny brown flesh Tomorrow they’ll turn into      purple festering corpses Fissured     gored    by a myriad flies • Down the Irrawaddy River       you lay yourself   to sleep No sun no moon          no coming no going No causality   no personality No hunger     no thirst • Malarial deltas      typhoidal cays Tsunamis don’t judge     Calamity grieves no one The poor will be submerged     the rich won’t be saved Purge the innocent     sink the depraved • What do I smell        but the perfume of   transience Crushed calyxes         rotting phloems Let’s write     pretty poems        pretty poems      pretty poems Masque stale pogroms    with a sweet whiff of oblivion