Monthly Archives: May 2015

Raphy Nicholas Bell, September 20 – October 7, 1981

A lifetime later,

I sit at my desk

And the light in the water glass

Catches my eye.

All I want to do

Is write a poem

To keep the light

Catch the light

Caught by the water

As it plays in the glass on the desk.

Glances. Goes.

Where does light go

When I can’t see it?

That flicker of li li ofli

That flick light

Flick

Light flicker

That

Was you

There once was a man from Tacoma,
Who gave off a pleasant aroma.
He hooked up with a gent
With a similar scent,
Until he died of a malignant sarcoma.

Consider my dick. At three score years and ten,

It still stands tall to defy its age.

It’s habitually shy – till now – when

It’s been thrust upon the national stage.

From what I hear I can use this magic rod

To pry up love, destroy whole families,

Magic away your faith in almighty God

And bring a global empire to its knees.

Look on my dick, ye mighty, and despair.

It’s not alone. Millions will appear

Born out of God’s genetic air,

Year after year, feeding your sad fear.

The Eternal Queer is everywhen and where.

Look on my dick, bitch, and despair.

Born with more handicaps than a pretty gayboy

From Red Neck, Oregon,

You started life blind and black

And crippled with a joint disease

That should have kept you mewling in a back room

Till death dragged you out.

Instead, you defied borders and boundaries,

Restrictions and constrictions,

Transported by spirit from Perth to Perth

Circling the globe

To circumambulate us all.

 

Always one step ahead of me,

You get off the escalator

A heartbeat before I do

Wait for me,

Hold out your hand

And laugh.

On my old man days,

When everything hurts,

My head, my back, my feet, my spleen,

The bleeding calendar, the weather,

The rotten rose on the October stem,

On those days, slipping into something new

Where I will be with you in the dark light,

Is the final calm after so many storms.

Now as I get ready to go into the dark myself,

Help me to remember:

Death is just a farther Europe

That you got to first.

Every loss leaves another hole.
A puncture in the outer shell, a knife
Wound that lifts another chunk of soul,
Pierces the safe illusion of my life.
Father, mother, son, brothers-in-love,
Living lovers lost to lies and shame,
Friends unfriended when push descends to shove,
Survival seems such a loser’s game.
But in time, I’m a leaf reduced to lace
A tracery with clarity of sight
And then it’s me and God, face to face.
Funny, how every hole lets in more light.
I’m being taught that we’re all one,
That I’m a drop of light in a flood of sun.