All the beautiful men are dying....

Michael, I went to a copy center this evening, and I made it high-priority to put the photo of you--in that infamous orange shirt you seemed to favor as it favored you--on the glass and make a large color copy of it. Just to have. To take to Macondo next week, so i can share it with Ire'ne and Moises and any others who knew you. It is a time for me to reflect on my dear brothers and poet-elders who have passed and left me pulsing here, earthbound.

All the beautiful men are dying, I say to my monitor as unexpected tears well up and start to spill. All the softest, gentlest, not-afraid-to-say-they-loved-they-mama sweet honest men. When Pasha left us last spring, I couldn't believe the loss i felt. He was like, could have been like another father to me. To face the fact that I could never hear his melodic incantations anymore just crushed me deeply. How could i not have visited him one more time in Austin? And why didn't i mail him those photos of him with Theresa in front of Whole Foods? Why all the waiting and putting off of the expressions of love? Don't let it be too late, when it's too late--that's all i'm left with.

Ken H and Lorenzo T and the women too--Gloria A, omigod, the loss. The sudden urgency to fill the vaccuum, to get my shit down, write more and harder and truer and do it in their honor, their memory. Now or soon.


--- In light of what Lorna Dee, one of my dear compas and mentors wrote recently:

"And, yes, write a poem and right a wrong, and light a light in some child's eyes for Trino. And light a laugh in some friend's face, and light a light in the heart of your lover. Regina, I am so, so saddened for your loss. As my mother often said of my father: 'There will never be another man like him.' "