I have discovered the limitations in telling people what they want to hear-of omitting everything queer and pretending it doesn’t sear some sensibility that gets lost in the blues and greys in the gravel where all pathways unravel and no one can afford to travel to another place where there’s empty space in graveyards and no graffiti on the mausoleums. I’ve walked this road before and I just can’t take it anymore, each time I pass that man with amputated legs wearing rags and army tags in the parking garage who makes no plea for help and makes me feel like a whelp because I can’t look at him and he’s stopped bothering to look at me. So I get tetchy and maybe it’s off kilter but I can’t stand that fucking filter and all the blisters it’s rubbed as I’ve snubbed human beings just to cling to the thing that’s made me wince when I’ve dealt out fifty cents and you call me intense or dramatic or idealist or disturbed and yes I’m perturbed and listless and rueful and scared witless about what that man sees me as but I’m nowhere near raw and I can’t seem to thaw beyond this relentless gnaw in my gut, so I get stuck in a rut-all grief and not enough relief no belief in this silent society so I’m forlorn and I mourn as I pass tombstones on the street. I dig up chalky bones and lay them at your feet-look, look, LOOK, DAMNIT!-at how gruesome and intrusive was this man’s existence but still there’s the persistence to avert your gaze, retreat to a comforting haze and insist they aren’t real, they aren’t real, they aren’t real as you walk along pretending nothing’s wrong because if they aren’t real then maybe you won’t have to feel your own prosthetic legs.