a little confused
on the matter of
pride

I'm ok with being gay,
it's just that
i wish i'd turned out to be
another kind of gay, an
olympic athlete, perhaps,
the poster-boy for gayness,
the kind of wholesome red-blooded
All-American Gay that
makes us all
Proud to be gay if we are gay
+ feel good about tolerating
gays if we aren't gay --
but instead,
i turned out different,
in fact,
sometimes i think
i turned out
terrible
i drink too much
i get in bad moods where i just
sit there + stew + say practically nothing
i get in fantastic ridiculously good moods
where i chatter on + on like
both poodles in a poodle conversation
who are yapping at each other
about their owners, their collars, their
food dishes, their water dishes, the
precise science of cat butt-hole-sniffing
i am terrible
i am two poodles yapping
i am big hungry eyes
staring at the best young men
on the planet
i stare at attractive waiters
and no matter how discreet i am
let's face it
i do stare
i am drunken mice
squeaking under the house
it is dark
it is raining --
the scent of
disappointment is
stronger than
stale urine.
Yet
The poster-boy gay stands
there with his
big medals draped
around his neck, he is Mr.
Perfect, Mr.-Hey-Hey-It's-All-OK-To-Be-Mr. Gay, Mr.
Wholesome -- It's Honorable
To Tolerate Somebody Like Me In Fact Not Only That --
It's Practically Your Red-Blooded All-American
Duty
he stands there, and i
wonder if he ever
feels like he's just
two poodles yapping
but no that's not his job
that's my job
i'm the one that
gets to feel like two poodles yapping
and i strongly suspect it's a job
he's in no hurry
to take away from
me, but i'll bet he'd
tell me he's proud
of me
"the world needs its little gay poets, too," he'd
say, "we can't all be Perfectly-Suited-for-Public-
Display-Like-Me"
at this point i'd get in one of
my moods where i say practically nothing,
and the light reflecting from
his white shiny teeth
would be absolutely right,
and perfectly
dazzling.
(at this point
i pull myself together enough
to speak once more, and
what i say
is
"yap  yap  yap")

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem also appears in my book Shy Boy at Home, published by Chiron Review Press in 1999. Before that, it appeared in Chiron Review, Issue #50, April 1997.)