In St. Louis the boys
In St. Louis the boys
Gather at night to pause
Beneath a cloud
To count the industry
Of circumcision
Driven by the memories
Of needles of the moment
Their bodies clothed in
Rough beauty that sleeps
In the breast of comrades
Who ache for Walt Whitman
Who ache between the river
And the sexual Satyr
Among the billboards
That howls to be heard
Like the taste of the
Nude Mississippi
That groan at the
Shore of St. Louis.
The boys, yes the boys
Darker then swamp water
The boys with pricks
The size of a long finger
They huddle at the corner of the river
Where the word faggot was drowned
And the blaze of the burnt color water
Decompose its rich
Stores of dying things.
In the wardrobe of a solitary man
Whose tongue is caked with
River mud and enemies
Of the desires that reaches
Out as branches
To pierce the pillow
Is to be found the secrets
That he keep in his back pocket.
The boys who stoned to death tomorrow
By his faith that foul
The silent sleepless
Motion of the water
The boys are swimming
The classical river
They celebrate the edge
Of the river with the words
Father of the waters
That celebrates nothing human.
poem by David E. Patton
Added by Poetry Lover
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