A Gay Man’s Ode to Brad Pitt

It’s not just your abs that make me love you,

those perfect ridges of man flesh,

though they are reason enough to take you to verse,

to immortalize your body like a Greek God,

I your homo-Homer. And it’s not those nude photos

that surfaced in the late 90s of you prancing

around with your dick tucked between your legs,

like when I was a little boy and first

discovered the flexibility of cocks,

or when my cousin and I sat in a bathtub naming

each other’s genitals, mine Fred, his George,

like characters in some genderfuck play,

which you never starred in, off-off Broadway. 

Instead it’s your face, that blank canvas,

I can’t stop starring at, a symbol of everything

I’ll never have: the Hollywood It Girl, the baby

in the stroller, the body that makes even

the straight boys hard. That masculine appeal

that bends the floorboards, snaps the trees,

takes air from mouths gaping wide. It’s you, Brad,

with your eyes that say anything I want:

tell me the story of our creation, glue me back

together again, say you love me like you mean it.

Let me hear you, let me project everything

onto your skin and make you flicker like an old black and white

newsreel telling of the end times, the apocalypse.

Deciding Our Future After Watching Brad Pitt on Larry King Live

We need to make it right, Pitt tells King with the sincerity

of a silver-screened god who wants to save the world, or at least

New Orleans. And I envy his belief in fame, in money fixing

everything. We only want to save our world, here in this Florida

apartment, with its crooked kitchen cabinets and walls

that crumble in your hands. Yes, our world with its Sunday

morning fucks and talks in the dark where your face becomes

a shadow and I must decide where your nose, eyes, and lips go.

Save what’s left of love, a concept your cold parents never taught

you and mine taught all too well. Some days I wait for total

destruction, for the flood to come and fill our apartment

like that hurricane those crazy Christians think came from God,

to wash all the sin away—kinda sweet, in a twisted, horrible,

sort of way. A chance to start over, you and I, in this bed,

with the dog curled at our feet, and our hands side by side.

So let’s flip off the TV, climb into each other, knowing

nothing is ever as it seems, not even a movie star saving

the world, or a couple of queers trying to save each other.