2000
Dream as Jason Daniel Roberts
Artefact: Article, ‘The Accidental Activist’, written by Jon Barrett, The Advocate, 18 July issue, 2000.
Danny is a dream
A twenty-two-year-old dreamboat
Beaming onto MTV screens
Squirting through new millennium cable
Far across deep seas
Burrowing through European soils
In coils
Running up English driveways
Plugging into freshly unwrapped multi-channel boxes
Four-and-half thousand miles from New Orleans
These bright pictures of his recent past
His blurred-out lover
His Hollywood
Boy-next-door
Too-good-to-be-true
Instant crush
Features
Multiplied into all those foreign living rooms
The world, shrinking
Snapping back into a compressed nugget
Touchable
Everything within reach
Manchester, Atlanta
Osaka, Sydney
Seventeen-year-old queers on different continents
Thanking the heavens
Tuning in, religiously
Disbelieving that a TV executive
Could have aligned the stars this way
The constellations brighter
Making sense
Revealing themselves at last
What if the person you fancied most in the world
Could, conceivably
Like you back?
A tremor
New thought
Kiss you?
An open-hearted profound magic
Universe-undoing hope
Appearing on the large curving TV glass
Hot
Playable weekly
Plus all the repeats
Helping to ensure that the hope is real-world hope.
Danny
Jason Daniel
Jason, actually, is dreaming more prosaically
Of the future
Of coffee cups and team meetings
Sending out smooth-cornered friendly emails
Crafted to sell
Selling houses
Smooth, friendly eyes hoping for a sale
Dreams of picking up his daughter
Throwing her up onto his shoulder
Picking up the shopping
Bagels
The laundry from the place where the laundry gets done
The pieces, when things fall apart
As they are going to
Once, twice
Cold, frosty
Gaps expanding between bodies
Drifting, America-like, away from the old landmass
Weighted love
Sliding inevitably towards a new setting
Apart
The world, stretching again, becoming distant
Far flung
Reaching into the freezer
Ice cream from the tub
Carbohydrates
Running the weight off
Signing paperwork to make things final
Severed
Receiving test results
Remembering medication
Trimming his beard into the same tidy shape
Washing woollen sweaters in the sink with the pink soap
Hiking
Breath hot in the early mist
Phone apps
Messages, pinging in
High up the mountains
Missives of love
Practicalities
Arrangements
Cancellations
Selfies
Smiles and hearts and eggplants and unicorns
GIFs of the sea
Like this, like this
The world gasping and virtual
Reality, dreaming itself back to him
A twenty-two-year-old dreamboat
Beaming onto MTV screens
Squirting through new millennium cable
Far across deep seas
Burrowing through European soils
In coils
Running up English driveways
Plugging into freshly unwrapped multi-channel boxes
Four-and-half thousand miles from New Orleans
These bright pictures of his recent past
His blurred-out lover
His Hollywood
Boy-next-door
Too-good-to-be-true
Instant crush
Features
Multiplied into all those foreign living rooms
The world, shrinking
Snapping back into a compressed nugget
Touchable
Everything within reach
Manchester, Atlanta
Osaka, Sydney
Seventeen-year-old queers on different continents
Thanking the heavens
Tuning in, religiously
Disbelieving that a TV executive
Could have aligned the stars this way
The constellations brighter
Making sense
Revealing themselves at last
What if the person you fancied most in the world
Could, conceivably
Like you back?
A tremor
New thought
Kiss you?
An open-hearted profound magic
Universe-undoing hope
Appearing on the large curving TV glass
Hot
Playable weekly
Plus all the repeats
Helping to ensure that the hope is real-world hope.
Danny
Jason Daniel
Jason, actually, is dreaming more prosaically
Of the future
Of coffee cups and team meetings
Sending out smooth-cornered friendly emails
Crafted to sell
Selling houses
Smooth, friendly eyes hoping for a sale
Dreams of picking up his daughter
Throwing her up onto his shoulder
Picking up the shopping
Bagels
The laundry from the place where the laundry gets done
The pieces, when things fall apart
As they are going to
Once, twice
Cold, frosty
Gaps expanding between bodies
Drifting, America-like, away from the old landmass
Weighted love
Sliding inevitably towards a new setting
Apart
The world, stretching again, becoming distant
Far flung
Reaching into the freezer
Ice cream from the tub
Carbohydrates
Running the weight off
Signing paperwork to make things final
Severed
Receiving test results
Remembering medication
Trimming his beard into the same tidy shape
Washing woollen sweaters in the sink with the pink soap
Hiking
Breath hot in the early mist
Phone apps
Messages, pinging in
High up the mountains
Missives of love
Practicalities
Arrangements
Cancellations
Selfies
Smiles and hearts and eggplants and unicorns
GIFs of the sea
Like this, like this
The world gasping and virtual
Reality, dreaming itself back to him