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Lush Life

Mama doesn't know about the feather boas
or dreams of stepping in snake skin stiletto heels.
She doesn't know I'm a heart breaking homo
some sugar daddy's lover
in a public park after dark.

I'm a lipstick queen with a dick for a brain.
She doesn't know I was six years old
when a boy kissed me
in a first grade bathroom.

She doesn't know about
the underwear I've seen
or the magazines tucked
beneath my mattress.
She has no idea of the
shafts that have circled the tip
of my lips,

tongues that have committed to love me
slither into the mouths of wives,
tearing out their eyes with lies.
Honey I love you.

Mama doesn't
about the fuck buddy
in a bathroom of
a recreational park.
The blowjobs
in apartments
of guys who never
give out their last name,

who never offered
me anything to drink
but instead pushed my head
into their denim laps,

who came in my mouth
and I nearly puked my
breakfast on their
alligator shoes
that poked from beneath
a turquoise stall.

She doesn't know about the men
who have peeled off my pants,
men with tongues like swords that circle
my belly button,
that explore the remnants
of a black man's ass.

Mama doesn't know 
about the toll-free calls
to a health clinic,
the twenty dollars I forked out
for an HIV test,
the blood from veins to a nurse's needle.

She doesn't know about the agony of waiting
2 weeks for the results.
Weigh the what if's like grapefruit.
What if I have AIDS?
What do I tell my parents?
Who's to blame?
What was his name?
I can't remember the number he left
on the wall of a convenience store bathroom.

Mama doesn't know about
the men who jerked me off
in front of urinals
in a shopping mall
on Saturdays when I was only seventeen.

Or the naked Cuban
in the front seat
of a forest green Ford
until the windows fogged
from body heat.

She thinks karate kicks are fluttering in my eyes
at a Jackie Chan movie.

I'm every mother's son, who longs for lipstick,
who wishes for wonder bras from Victoria's secret.

Someday I'll explain it all to her
Ten thousand miles away in a 16 page letter
or tell her on the phone 3 in the morning
when she hardly knows her name.

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