the dancer (club mix)
see him he is
un touchable, unreadable,
more lovely than smooth gravity
glistening
down the length of his body
his small hips, his tight
perfect ass swinging
up to the platform, all motion
swivelling on his golden ball-bearings.
see him moving
on rhythmic cue, he
is beautiful, so unreadable
the curve of his spine
is the jigsaw puzzle
we want to put together,
the damp lush scene he is
to unlock his vaulted package,
the overflowing box
of our stone-dragging youth.
but we are falling
at his feet, longing
to take each biblical toe
into our mouths, praying
to be his stigmata, oh
his incubus-tongued angel,
love eye-d, all sugar-eyed
like the e-queens bopping high,
messed on their own love trip tripping
though we’re all chasing
locks, zippers,
the elastic band
holding his jockstrap together.
but he is
getting paid a doctor’s wage
to be that fat man’s murderer,
the old troll’s executioner, a killer
made more lovely
stroking the blade of his
oh so deadly nipples.
and beneath the red light
he will be the boy in school
who beat the shit out of us
for looking: he will be
our velvet fuck, our burly-man prince,
our mint-
flavoured lamb, our saviour … but see
he is grazing down his belly,
all ten fingers
an arsenal to keep us smouldering.
we can smell
the gunpowder between his legs
and we want to pop, pop
pop
because he is getting paid
to fuck our minds, getting paid
to make us forget our mirrors,
the crystal-dropping twinks
floating to the dance floor,
bouncing like muppets.
because he is
getting paid
to make the drag queens feel
like real women, getting paid
to be their spank-spank boy,
the roughneck quarterback
running them past the goal line
of snickering small towns,
fathers who just wouldn’t understand,
but see he is
all muscle, his perfect ass swinging.
he is our golden trumpet,
our rainbow flat anthem:
Everybody wants to be somebody
Everybody wants to be somebody
Everybody wants to be somebody
Everybody wants to be somebody
by the man upstairs who
discovered his ass,
knew it
would be a money-maker, a ching-
ching factory of coke-den lies,
a bar tab of heart
heart
heartbreak – but see he is
un touchable, unreadable,
more lovely than smooth gravity
glistening, sliding
down the length of his
bones.
but he is getting paid
at the end of the night and
these are some of the bones
he takes home; his
mother’s narrow foot
dancing away from him, his
grandmother’s hairpins
falling into a drawer
bursting inside his aunty’s head
while she was sleeping,
drunk … and his own
aching bones,
half-breed and kicking.
yet later, swallowed by
the empty mouths of our beds,
we will think of him.
we will make him pay.
he will be our second-hand doll
and we will use him
for free, as if
he meant nothing