Irregular, Disorganized Rhythms

colleague—never nice
a writing-cities connection
never friend
died gym happened
sweets Dewey-love sitting on
the self-love with Bill found for
their community-4th tryst

AIDS does July in lump
just too severely sad to see
Bill-and and Dewey-but
he at much the up
he too now the best
drinking-Bill whose chest
shows pouch fibrillation

sad couplet and luckily
Bill to slut Dewey 
longed to become
defibrillator-zap
Dewey unsuspecting
of father once teacher to years
but time holds no brief

for Bill's hard chest emergency
implanted when too
young for anything
saw their father work martinis
behave like nearly everything
yet said a stranger
not once wasn’t

_______________________

The 4^th of July barbecue was too much sitting.
Dewey just came to show off their legs.

Nice seeing Bill after his emergency,
and the pouch in his chest where the defibrillator is—
Bill an old grad school and work colleague—
never an actual friend—
a gay man
(not a slut like Dewey),
a writing teacher at Minnesota Community and Technical College—
about the best teaching job you can get in the Twin Cities.

Last time they saw Bill three years ago,
he said he’d given up sweets and was drinking martinis instead,
but just a couple.
Since then, he’s had ventricular fibrillation and nearly died,
and now he has the lump.
It's gone off once, but it wasn’t severely painful—
just like getting a strong push in the chest.
He was at the gym when it happened, he said.

Sad to see old associates who’ve had to come to grips with death,
as Dewey luckily has not as yet.
How will their self-love prosper when it does happen?
It will be fascinating to find out for sure
if anything could ever dampen it.

Dewey’s strongest connection to Bill—

Bill once saw Dewey’s father play Pastor Manders in Ghosts
for a director who, I believe,
died of AIDS.