Ma, I'm Gay

I can't stand the restlessness any longer!
If I were wearing a 19th century hairdo,
it would look like a haystack by now!

It sickens me, how they avoid me.
It's because I'm not fabulous enough, girrrl.
I don't don't emanate ferocity like those glowing sequins...
I mean, seriously, if you're gonna
rob this country of its morals,
you must do it like a diva all the way through--

So you're not a flighty Nancy Boy.
A maricon.
That's not how your Dominican father raised you!

You were expected to ripen and rot as qucikly
as the ideals we so cautiously laid upon you,
and you look like you've basically entered adulthood,
that nice stage where you're your own mortified audience.
"He's a filthy motherfucker"
turns to
"I would make a horrid boyfriend,"
"I'm unique" becomes "I'm hideous,"
and your cuts for pain release
are now for your hatred at the flesh gawking lazily below you.

This, my child, is opening the doors to your heart.
Never thought it'd be such a pigsty, that's for sure.
When it reaches years of pretending not to have one,
it's bound to happen.

Done with freshman year at college,
and you've finally reached puberty!

On Turning Nineteen

I can't wait to be 19,
the age where hipsters become hipsters
and your cosmopolitan side begins to
radiate from your body.

You begin saying things like "I've been there, man,"
and flaunting your newfound cynic realism
as if it were an accessory from the Velvet Underground's tour bus,
because anything is better than 18.

Anything towers over that collection of 365 salt grains
that consists of taking a dive in the real world,
with your feet meeting the Jaws of America.

I am turning 19.
Alas, the beginning of repression,
where it's no longer chic to tremble with honesty,
so you begin storing it and saving it
for the hibernation of your Alvy Singer neurosis.
Goodness gracious, that's in fashion.

It's not you in the mirror.
It's you that's become deformed
by the mask that was pushed onto your face,
or maybe it was you flew into it,
I can't remember at the moment.

Anyway...your blood has had its last curdle,
and the car crash could be so obvious--
the engine would zoom past all their noses--
without the lack of humanity for medication.
You don't know what exists, and you're cold fucking sober.

But damn, it makes a great poem.