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IF YOU COME BACK I WON'T HAVE AIDS
If you come
back I swear
I'll be more fun, I won't be dark
I won't have AIDS, I'll change
my blood, I'll
have it drained and
replaced with rosewater, I won't bleed I won't whine
I won't think, I'll learn to shop
and like it, I'll wear nice shoes I'll cut my toenails I'll get a
manicure for you
I won't
talk about dying friends, or when I was in a wheelchair and how
I learned to walk again, I know
it makes you nervous. I'll hide my medicine I won't have
nightmares I won't
expect you to think or talk I won't be messy I won't share
my romance with death with you I won't tell you
the dream I had that I jumped out of an airplane, flying over the
mountains and over trees and buildings, finally to land in an
alley and said
that was a good way to die. It was sunny very bright.
I know you dream of flight but love of death
eludes you. Although you must have some of it
to be with me you knew the risks but if you
come back I'll no longer be an emissary
of death, I'll go skipping everywhere
whistle a happy tune I'll put on angel's wings and scatter
joy like confetti through the air, clouds of joy
will dog my every move and sunshine will
be nothing to my halo.
K-MART
in my
deracination I’ve developed fascination with the stories
of the future and the past, the present doesn’t mean much to
me
right at this minute I’m an old drunk who got sober and a slut
who’s past her prime, a party girl who’s too old for the game
men can say the same thing and it sounds so cool but when a
woman says it it’s not that enticing
I remember how we looked at women my age when I was young
and pretty when they still tried to look sexy, I secretly admired
them, the ones who seemed proud and defiant guess I’m like
those women
now
but I feel
tender and unlike them have a tendency to whine
which is odd when I’m angry half the time
the other half I’m scared and I’m aware that by this time I am
supposed to have hung up my gloves and hung up curtains
made of lace at all the windows for a man
how do they do that all those girls who lived so wild somehow turn out to
have a knack for keeping house
I’ll never
forget
one of my best
buddies
fucking crazy
guy who used
to hang out at times square at night to pick up
boys
he liked transvestites
and crazy skinny angry girls
we both got clean around the same time but we both stayed
crazy then one day he couldn’t meet for our usual
bagel and coffee
because he and his fiance,
a girl ten years younger than me,
had a date to buy linens at K-Mart
he explained that K-Mart was
pretty cool
and
I should
go
HOT PANTS
walking
the streets
in the shortest short shorts
imaginable no bra you're jigglin' the boys say, your bouncin' baby, grown
men
grab her breasts on the street in the subway, she slaps them,
bold
in her fourteen year old stupidity thinking no one can hurt her
or would want to searching
for something unnamable unknowable something
in someone's face in arms
wrapped tight enough to hold her she'll fly apart soon if no one
holds her
into a million pieces, joined only
by thin string stretched too far, how will she know its face if she
sees it, the shadow
across the faces of many men in her child brain she thinks she's got it in
each man, the grown man energy strong enough to glue
the
pieces
scattered to the wind the edges
sharp enough to cut
THE LIE
what is this
loneliness, this
useless pseudopodious salesman of desire who
pulls your doors apart, poking fingers in your mouth, “say
aaaah”
makes his case without a leg to stand on will
pull you outta life,
poking holes in daylight 'til the night streams through, he
trolls you under bridges
scaring passengers in cars and men, his
sounds of need his moaning of desire a
smell of fear that falls you pray to terrorized wanderings through
fields of hay where grass has been through empty lots where
ghosts of buildings sing of families that used to be there could
have been your own
where have you been why
are you praying for release from him his shadow haunts you but
you turn and you see nothing
your reflection only stares back from his
empty holes of eyes the gaze that tears you into pieces no
soldering can heal
or put together back in place the way you
really are inside, instead
the graven image of this god of isolation makes you over in his
image, losing you
you stand bereft this slug of pain this diamond pointed knife in
hand is cutting deep into your heart he etches his own name
like a prison tattoo it bleeds the life right out of you
Jean Lehrman is a woman with AIDS who lives and works in New York City.
She emerged from the womb writing but life slapped it out of her 25 years
ago. Words sprung back last spring and started banging on her lips. When
she ran out of people to read to over the phone she discovered the mic.
Fallen in love with it, Jean plans to take over every stage in New York
City and later the world. She has featured at the Cornelia Street Cafe,
Barnes and Noble Bookstore, Nightingale's Tavern and others, and is the
author of a chapbook, "If You Come Back I Won't Have Aids".
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