Their beginning

“Tomorrow, the day after, or through the years he’ll write
powerful lines, that here was their beginning.

KFB POETRY LAB | BEGINS JAN 16

I’m often asked what bought me to poetry. It opened the door of my closet. O’Hara. Ginsberg. Genet. Lorde. Ashbery. Schuyler. Baldwin. Tenn. Giorno. Cole. Rich. Jordan. Clifton. Gunn. Hemphill. Cooper. Dlugos (to name but a few by heart, not to mention their branches).

My first love, Cavafy.

Like many gay men of a certain age, adulthood came early and Cavafy spoke unsparringly what the two of us held most dear, desire, passion, longing, loss, want, rapt in the beauty of men. Fatal. Tragic. Undeniable.

Now, in the year of my 60th, approaching the release of my full-length debut, I’ve chosen to return “to the same fatal joy,” “illicit pleasures,” ‘My younger days, my sensual life—,” Their beginning. “He wishes that he might      feel…