2002
Dream as Fred C. Gormley Jr. a.k.a. Michael Flent
Artefacts: Article, ‘My Brief Career in Porn’, published in Christopher Street magazine, issue 84, January 1984. / Obituary in the New York Times, 25 November, 2002.
My eyes are falling
Soul dripping
You’re a ghost collapsing into me
A pain vibration with a sibilant ‘S’
A wave wanting to tangle in oscillations together
A mantra
A forgetting
A dream voice insisting four a.m. crazy
I know you
Old messages on the answering machine
Hearing what you want
Before it touches your tongue
‘S’
Esses
It’s
Wanna
It's
Gonna
Get deep
Down
In the blood
Down
In the red
In the turning around
In the - - -
Before the next contraction
The in-breath
Pre-gasp
So much space
Possibility
‘S’
Ess
Right there
Gonna get far in
Over the hump
Back to the past
A reverse birth
Strong, smooth, flexible, sensitive
Ask a pharmaceutical friend to help
Relax
In tablet form
Gonna slide
Past you and your alter-ego
Into darkness
Into beyond
A colour you don’t recognise
Not sunset
Not Pennsylvania
Not sweating skin
Not Twenty-Third Street
Hurt maybe
Nicotine stained maybe
The light bouncing off the silver
Off the mound of Crisco
Maybe
Gonna get inside the veins
Running around
Like it’s 1980
Like it’s 1968
Like it’s 2002
Like it’s hot in here
Running to put in a pump
Stripping for a Polaroid
Running for OK sex
For stupendous
Stupefying, grand
Unremarkable
Fucking the director
Sex
Gonna pull me up inside
Hands jammed
Cleaned up
Recreamed
Up the steps in tight clone jeans
Chin up to the bar
Up two at a time
To catch the ringing of the phone
Fast then
Sprinting up flights
Call Chris
Call me ‘Good News’
Congratulations
Up the one, two, three at Port Authority
Out onto the circuit
Calling to tell you that you’re a star
Now
An image of yourself
I’m nineteen and ten days
No special billing
Not an image of a man yet
Just a future collapsing into you
Soul dripping
You’re a ghost collapsing into me
A pain vibration with a sibilant ‘S’
A wave wanting to tangle in oscillations together
A mantra
A forgetting
A dream voice insisting four a.m. crazy
I know you
Old messages on the answering machine
Hearing what you want
Before it touches your tongue
‘S’
Esses
It’s
Wanna
It's
Gonna
Get deep
Down
In the blood
Down
In the red
In the turning around
In the - - -
Before the next contraction
The in-breath
Pre-gasp
So much space
Possibility
‘S’
Ess
Right there
Gonna get far in
Over the hump
Back to the past
A reverse birth
Strong, smooth, flexible, sensitive
Ask a pharmaceutical friend to help
Relax
In tablet form
Gonna slide
Past you and your alter-ego
Into darkness
Into beyond
A colour you don’t recognise
Not sunset
Not Pennsylvania
Not sweating skin
Not Twenty-Third Street
Hurt maybe
Nicotine stained maybe
The light bouncing off the silver
Off the mound of Crisco
Maybe
Gonna get inside the veins
Running around
Like it’s 1980
Like it’s 1968
Like it’s 2002
Like it’s hot in here
Running to put in a pump
Stripping for a Polaroid
Running for OK sex
For stupendous
Stupefying, grand
Unremarkable
Fucking the director
Sex
Gonna pull me up inside
Hands jammed
Cleaned up
Recreamed
Up the steps in tight clone jeans
Chin up to the bar
Up two at a time
To catch the ringing of the phone
Fast then
Sprinting up flights
Call Chris
Call me ‘Good News’
Congratulations
Up the one, two, three at Port Authority
Out onto the circuit
Calling to tell you that you’re a star
Now
An image of yourself
I’m nineteen and ten days
No special billing
Not an image of a man yet
Just a future collapsing into you