I lost him before I was even twenty-one
  and so many lost just like that again…
  All Brian’s lost boys just slip
  through his fingers and down
  into the drain…

And yes, how I wish you were here,
  and you and you and you if only
  for all the things I’ve forgotten, half-remembered—
  things found late at night on his futon
  while we sat and made fun of the television…

I carve another notch deep into my mind
  and clear-cut a space—of days past—it smolders
  like a fever in the air, tender as a sunburn…
  And every time it happens I am stunned—
  and lost again at twenty-one…

He had kind of a leer
It said, “I want this” and
it also said, “this is kind of
—ugh!” and he tried
a bit of a reach around but
I was having none of it,
too greedy to waste time on myself.

And ten or fifteen minutes passed,
and he leaped up, zipped up his jeans
and straightened his NOTW t-shirt.
Doubtful he’ll be back; then again,
perhaps this eighteen-year-old
lighting will strike a second time
if he’s randomly inclined.

And as he ducked out down the stairs,
satisfied and smug, propelled by youth,
something faintly shimmered through time,
and I remembered being young, and the men,
the more older, disheveled, or “ugh!”
the hotter it was, venturing into
idle lust for the sake of conquest or
just something to do…

I have a giant bruise on my arm
  from where the idiot nurse tried to take
  two vials of my blood—she only got one and a half
  because she accidentally knocked out the needle…

Sure there was the drama, the pain,
  the unfairness—she dug the needle to find my vein—
  but really it didn’t hurt so much and
  the bruise makes me laugh; it doesn’t hurt at all…

So much bruised skin over a life, and self inflicted
  pain always hurts the most, except maybe pain from places
  kept secret, beyond the bruises or visible scars;
  I press into the skin with my finger, to remember…

I wear exhaustion like yesterday’s shirt;
  passing minutes smart like a cut beneath the fingernail,
  while a ribbon of concrete unfurls along the ground
  in the Winter noonlight I am driving,
  my knuckles drag along the ground at 80 miles an hour…

I have visited this certain California time
  so many times that it might as well be a place—
  Sundays, Saturdays, even sometimes Wednesdays,
  not every day; it sneaks up on time, jumps into
  rotation and then bleaches the day in its light…

As I reach a summit—heading West, deep from East—
  and as the freeway tumbles out before me
  the valley yawns oceanward, and I feel
  the bladed glint of sun on ocean shimmer and
  light itself stings beneath my eyelids just like my fingernail…