We listened to music
and that’s all we were asked to do.
You did something more
and it destroyed you.
Why do human situations involve more
than spreading art across the floor?
You drew and listened to Tchaikovsky,
asking me a hundred questions.
Your flamboyance in nineteen seventy-three
was as simple and strange as my poetry
which wasn’t any good.
My poetry failed to live (but had a spark
because like all worthy art, it imitated—
I thought Auden and Eliot were sacred
and worshiped at the Midsummer Night’s Dream.)
Chopin, the theater arts, danced beside us in college,
where you rushed down the hall.
Poetry I liked, you, drawing, but Tchaikovsky
and his Pathetique to us was sometimes all.
All we had to do was listen to music
and act in plays. Then a woman arrived.
Niki, from England, nearly divorced;
her husband was a pothead; his favorite song was Locomotive Breath.
Niki and I had sex doing Ianesco’s The Lesson.
I had to lose my virginity. Most things we have to do
we do. Why did you compete for Niki’s affection?
We were never happy again.
You died from aids.
You had gone after what you wanted. Men.
You were ugly, but I learned, beautiful.
I learned aesthetic interest from you,
not aesthetics. You were curious but never serious
even as you asked me questions about my life, which you liked to do.
Remember bashful Ron Lonicki, petite Judy Keily?
Kent Denley. Now, with the help of Tchaikovsky, I remember you.