Homosexual

I need this word,

to recount the fall of dusk,

the progressive shift of the light

suffusing the skyline, lilting into

lilac. The silence of that night

where nothing but his name

reverberates inside my hollow mind,

of the weeping inability to speak it.

I need this word

to explain that mourning,

the shedding of skin

and a self, preordained.

My child unbegotten,

my fatherhood un-maled.

I need this word

to speak of hands unheld, the leap

across the pavement flags

bathed in streetlight yellow rays,

lurching from lamp-post to

lamp-post, long-jumping

the shadows of creeping violence.

I need this word

to sing midnights, the swing

of the neck as the head sways

to its new-found music, the hands

raised to guide the feet

in their nocturnal gambol.

I need this word

to spell the cerulean dawn,

the last kiss snatched as the

dancefloor disperses into daybreak,

the knots knocked out of the shoulder

sinews, the space and time to find

the path and walk it, make it mine.