One-On-One

ONE

Dear diary, I am reading Hamlet again

I met with a mad woman, she drank iced coffee,

I had iced tea, who, when asked about madness

in the play said she saw herself as Fortinbras

Dear diary, how can I put into words

what I have seen these past weeks?

The murder of the Aztecs by Cortes - a drag queen!

And all the birds fell out of the sky above America

Dear diary, what can I tell you about the dinner

with the literary circle? The opera house in the jungle?

The poet and his lover? Berlin, you keeper of secrets,

you destroyer, you surreal dream - I lit your fireworks,

I powered your televisions and installed your satellite dish

TWO

Do you know what I did in a room today, by myself?

Do you know how I felt when she showed me her breasts

and wrote me a letter? What did I feel, dear diary

when I met the artist I have admired for so long and spoke to him

and watched his hair move and his nails and his studded boots

as he confessed that he had kissed a male audience member

in his show once, and his barely legal girlfriend was shocked

"Are you all my boyfriend?"

THREE

Dear diary, Berlin and London are one suddenly, and Gent,

Dear diary, will we speak of the heat in decades to come

and say, "do you recall the heat of 2010?"

"The sky was worn upside down by the earth", we will say

"There was no shame, no safe-guards, no holding back, only intimacy

between strangers", as the man in the audience

kisses the girl in the play who is pretending to be his date

while his girlfriend waits for him downstairs

FOUR

Put your tongues away! Hold your tongues!

It was 2010

It was so hot, the cement in the middle of the road

turned to water

And your eyes, so sharp and cold and human

turned to look at me,

and became something else,

i

.../written in July, edited in November