A Personal Ad

A PERSONAL AD

Ginger gay Irish-American poet-bard seeks blushing friends with literary benefits. Must appreciate the eroticism of paper, and be willing to engage in clothing-optional story-song contests in library and bedroom alike. A taste for Bushmill’s goes a long way towards achieving détente. Even better if like me you practice the art of the literary personal ad, with a habit of posting erotic ecstatic poems, pastiches of Borgesian ficciones, odes to Whitman or Lorca or other queer bards, or essays about the Sacred Heart and what it means to a tantric gay muse-follower with a loaded word-horde. Has been known to write erotic haibun celebrating the joys of ginger-on-tan sex. Replies to this ad in tanka or sestina form will go to the front of the line.



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A new entry in the genre of "literary personal ads" that I occasionally like to write. It's a fun way to stretch the literary muscles while having a bit of fun as well.

Green Man Project 3: Desert Colors

Green Man Project 2

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green man gold
autumn rest
till spring

winter sleep
long snow spell
under leaves

dream cast
coat of prayers
across a sea

a sigh, a slumber
inside green crucible
life is remade

reborn
alchemy
of flesh

from brown
to awakening
teeth of mother nature

Writing Eros 2

whichever way the wooden lathe
turns from roller to printer
the emergent wave of light
returning text to line
image of love in words and paean
torso and sigh and simple passion

in word and sigh the end of love
beginning of forever

World AIDS Day

I wanted to write something for World AIDS Day, yet I find that my friend prairiemary has already said almost everything I might want to say. So I'll just encourage folks to go read what she wrote.

And I'll leave my own silent comments via my artwork:


Sacred Heart Labyrinth


Burning Phallus Labyrinth


Shiva Dancing in the Labyrinth (from Spiral Dance)

Teenage Years Triptych

(Maps courtesy of USGS. Click on each image for larger version.)

Survival

I look at some of the people I know who are living with HIV, with AIDS, with cancer, who live with these and other life-threatening illnesses and situations, and I want to say to them:

You're a survivor.

You're tougher than you ever imagined you were, or needed to be. You've proven yourself to be tougher than you thought by your quiet action of living through what has killed so many others. You might not feel like a hero, but you are.

Maybe that's small comfort, some days, yet it's what gets us through. The difference between a hero and a coward is that a hero runs towards the battle, not away from it. Think about that, on those darkest of days.


Adam, from Spiral Dance

I've had some serious dark days myself, and I have had been down some similar roads. I've come close to my personal extinction, and I live with a (non-AIDS) permanent chronic illness, that takes a huge toll on my lifeforce and energy. Comparisons don't really matter, though. What matters is that we survive, and live, and thrive. Sod anybody who tries to pull you down to their sordid and sorrowful level. Those who try to drag you down do so because they can't stand being reminded that someone might get out of the black hole they call home. They've forgotten a really important lesson:

Why do we fall?
To learn to pick ourselves up again.


Beach Prayer (2005)

Writing Eros