Dinner With My Father And The Counselor While Jonesing For My New Chick

A smoky table,

Meat,

Cheap whiskey

And Talking with two

Mad smoky men,

Each of us separated 

By no less than 

Twenty years,

I the youngest;

And here these two 

Rusted wizards,

Both of whom I love

But do not,

Could not, know.

And we are talking about God

And beauty

And truth,

And we are talking Oscar Wilde,

Talking William Blake

And death 

And life

And drugs

And the lost meaning 

Of the rush 

That stops your senses

And leaves you more alive 

And more dead 

Than you had ever wished

To be;

And we are talking about love

And about fucking,

And there is a savagery 

About this table,

This dim men’s lair,

Even screaming 

And barking, 

And then looks of 

Intellectual wonder,

And strange secrets, 

And plays for respect,

As if we were not men round a man’s table

But rough and complicated boys 

In a tree house

Into which we have climbed for refuge

From the idiocies of adults.

And there is talk of love.  

And there is a hiss, 

A hum, 

In the 

Thick raw air, 

Air crowded by words

But nonetheless afire.

I talk to them like a crazed little boy, 

Like a warrior stripped of his sword,

Like a child, like the little beloved one,

The one who has not yet lived,

And yet possesses an envied wisdom.

I talk of you.  I tell of a love that breaks the rule, 

Tell of breaking the rules of love;

I speak naively of such things

Into the ears of seasoned men,

Men with hair on their ears,

Men with sadness of years in their blurred eyes.

I dream aloud to them

Of cupping gently your treasured throat,

Seizing hotly your treasured arms, 

And this after I had already come,

And should have been hiding

Within myself

From the terrible prospect of meeting you 

On the other side of desire where there 

Should be no more treasure.     

But here suddenly,

I tell them, 

There is more,

For I want nothing but you, 

Still, to gather you up 

A thousand more times.

I don’t know a goddamn thing really,

But it seems stupid to think

That I was put here to despair, 

To sigh and shake my head;

And so I have not given up on love 

And so know that there is a love

Which defies all I have learned

Of love,

Which shines through every 

Lie and scruple

With a light of 

Many mysteries.

 

And this is the talk of a young man,

I know.  I am young 

And am therefore at liberty to speak grandly

Of life that is yet mine

Since I have not lived it.

And I know that I too will grow old, 

Perhaps despair, and then die, I know; 

I have heard it and learned it

And do not believe it,

But ought to believe it,

Yes, I know,

For they too knew love,

These my old brothers; 

They too walked enchanted

The oak groves

Of ecstasy.

And yet I do finally know,

Finally,

That it isn’t necessarily so

What they say.

I have other hopes, 

Even not to do, perhaps, 

Precisely what they did.

And there is you,

For whom I am actually dying here,

And for whom I have a curious desire

That you might know

What this night was like

For me.