writer | écrivain | ékwiven
A couple of weeks back, I had the pleasure of appearing on History is Gay, a podcast that examines the lives and personal identities of queer folks through the ages.
With her regular co-host Gretchen absent, Leigh and I discussed war poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Listen in for an episode rife with tragedy, bi-erasure, and as many quips as we could fit it! (Available on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.)
lonely little lover sitting on the shelf, with plastic parts
all shiny and brand new and a tiny plastic heart
consumed with burning desire for you
“love her but it couldn’t work,” you know the old refrain and so years pass and you drift your separate ways.
maybe that’s all for the best, maybe you’re in love with being loved, just a lovely little loner spilling down the drain full of empty compliments and a desperate need to kiss away your pain,
it only hurts for a moment, an excruitaiting bliss, and then you’ve made it through,
that’s just the way
life works kid.
Beyond it, moving through the cosmos unbounded,
Test it with a few vinegar phrases, but those wounds have been healed now for ages,
what’s your motive anyhow? we’re just strangers with a familiar sense of each other’s coding,
How much progress occurs by way of quiet judgement?
Fuck it. We’re all hypocrites, but try to feel it,
Can’t relate? Well that’s alright,
just sit steady while the angel launches.
(talk to me) so cheap all it takes is some stimulating conversation.
Listen in intently and you might just lure out secrets I didn’t even know existed.
Is it love if you find yourself falling every fifteen seconds? Is is real,
does it matter if you both can feel it?
To be frank, can’t quite relate to my peers (never could),
and I don’t expect to be understood by the many anymore, just leaving this behind for the few,
the bleeding hearts of the future to try to decipher,
on a cold night, when the wind howls and they’re searching for signs that they aren’t completely alone,
that the sadness isn’t forever,
that the void won’t devour them whole.
Sprawled out on a mountainside, shrouded in leaves and half-severed vines, I confess to be a wild thing, but you do not hear me.
Spill my blood to write fresh poems that defy rhyme and meter, each word alive, dripping with fervor, but you never read me.
Shouting/marching/fighting for compassion ’til my throat is dry, legs are weak, mind grows fatigued, yet you fail to see me.
In the soft glow of the afternoon, I sing a sad refrain, but the meaning is lost while the melody remains, so you do not feel me.
Still onward I careen, hopes unfettered, dreams undisturbed, for I learned long ago not to bury my soul in any single place or person.
Sad songs soothe me, whether summer days spent soaking in the sun, or winters shut up indoors enveloped in a good book, warm blankets, hot tea,
My soul only knows despair with short intervals of joy.
Madness, maybe,
But you can recharge my battery in the woods, the forest floor my corridor to some unexplained source of vitality.
That or let me breathe in salty ocean air,
Drown my old self in the cold, dark, blue of the Pacific,
Rise from the waves anew.
Born again and again in and out of your arms, watch me take off
like Apollo 11.
Balancing the day and the night, the light and the darkness, emotion and might.
Hayden Winston 
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