Since I had so much fun reworking Robert Frost classics into ditties about marshmallow peeps, I decided to try rewriting a slightly more serious poem. T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes” has always struck me as a pretty good metaphor for the gay bar scene in that its a verses are of depressing urban routine with a core of optimism and beauty at the center. So, with the acknowledgment that I am no T.S. Eliot (or even TS from Mall Rats) here’s what I came up with:

***

Pre-lubes
(with apologies to T.S. Eliot.)

I

A Winter night lifts up its legs
with the sound of bass, in dark, in hot.
2 am.
The tepid dregs of acrid shots.
And now the drunken currents bring
a passable thing
to drift in range of bleary eyes.
it orders you to close your tab.
You feign surprise.
You stumble till you catch a cab
to a neighborhood you do surmise
is getting nicer by the day.
And since you’re there you think you’ll stay.

II

His body comes to consciousness
and you are faint and stale
you extricate from crusted sheets
and march with the legions still
in last night’s pants.
Not one cares
to meet your glance.
You see a thousand tired hands
dropping foil squares
in bedside garbage cans.

III

You toss yourself upon your bed
set your alarm for 6 and nap
and dream, and plan again your scoring.
The endless fleshy fantasies
of which your life consists
are growing slowly boring.
When the beeping brings you back
you creep into the shower
you soak there for an hour
you have yourself upon a track
that you no longer understand;
To build yourself up trick by trick.
an endless cavalcade of dick.
You run a towel down your back
grip a bicep in one pruned hand.

IV

His jeans stretched tight across his thighs
he fades into a pulsing sea
of gentle faces and familiar tunes.
feeling better he turns to see
short square shoulders keep gentle time
and smile bright, and meet your eyes,
inured to certain certainties,
the desires of a blackened room
impatient to get him on his back.

He is soothed by the hopes that pulse
through that glance, the ultimate sign
that good men are wounded
and just waiting for their time.

Run your tongue across his ass and spit:
The room revolves around you like carnival rides
gathering speed to fall off their tracks.