Something got lost, a line,
a thought he heard in another’s eyes.
That was almost a visible phrase.
It mumbled of love.
A stranger came close.
A different light shone down.

Now he is coming home.
Is this the man you expected?
His face is a rock.
Each orifice weeps blood.
Does the suffering numb?

A virus was transmitted.
The doctors told him that.
Injections were a regular treat.
Specialists gave tests.

But there was another
more important thing he needed.
It’s only you who can give it.
Acceptance is reckoning
for those who die
with why on their lips.

Tonight you are the one
wearing that question.
You gaze at a boy slumbering,
at oxygen mask veils.

Thinness gets thinner.
Here touch could change the world
revoke rejection.

Look. He is flesh of your flesh.
It is essential that death should not
take him alone.

(The beginning of the AIDS pandemic in the United States was not so long ago)

Read Stephen’s poem “Fugitives” previously published as a Zingara Poetry Pick in 2016

—

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published Outsider artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads.  In 2014 he began a webpage to gather links of his poetry being published in such zines as Great Works, Unlikely Stories, Quill & Parchment, etc., in one place:  Poetry on the Line, Stephen Mead