The Low Tide Nocturnes

by Daniel Brennan

At High Tea, they take turns. They devour one another
in a bathroom stall, crammed in its clown-car tightness.
One says less teeth and the other merely sings
his libidinous submission. I listen as they trade miracles, as
a fist pounds against the stall door with impatience. The salt of service,
of pleasure; I marvel at their act of escapism, how they refuse to be denied.

2.

I didn’t have Blue or Honcho as a boy. No grizzled north star
to guide my hand’s slanted rhythm. I had Jesus, pinned to the cross,
that righteous twink, long-haired himbo, his body snatched
into a porn star’s physique. With him, I had the knowledge that what awaits us
in the dark is like a python stretching its jaws. Boyhood, meant
to be abandoned. Even now, we leave behind old skins on bedroom floors.

3.

No one at this orgy will outright trade their name. At least, not when it
matters most. In these costumes, which are simply the hungers we wear
after midnight, we come alive, darning our rituals across dark rooms. Men
with mouths like saucers of warm milk and eyes that strip flesh
clean off the bone. We are abundance and devastation waiting to happen.
In our wet throats: the unspoken name of whoever might save us tonight.

4.

It is not enough only to desire, and yet, that is what I do best.
Out on the dune’s blistered flesh, I watch one lover
sink into another, bodies split like a dying star, like rough-housing
nebulae. My hand moves slowly, following their satisfied howls;
I am a God, watching, roused by the sweet vulgarities of his creations.
The bleeding sky asks, what are you capable of when no one’s around?

5.

Some day we all die. A man with hair so blondely bleached
his scalp looks caustic tells me this, cigarette burning away
as he waits at the lip of an infinity pool. He beckons me
to join him, as if to prove him wrong, as if I knew how. If
I die, I will die. And if I live, isn’t that my cross to bear? Faint glow
of his face, solemn lighthouse. One foot into the water, then another.

6.

There is nothing left but the sea. The sea, and its icy tongue.
The sea, and its long gaze, its throaty cry, its savage body.
Men wander back from the tide as a storm spools overhead. Nowhere
left to go. So certain we are, our flesh already crying out from the past.
The walls shake in prophecy, the windows singing. What have we become
if not a misplaced longing; lightning with nothing left to strike?