How to Cruise the Men’s Restroom of Love’s Truckstop Outside 29 Palms
By Frederick Speers
Note: this is a choose-your-own-experience poem, so use the hyperlinks to avoid scrolling forever.
1
O god through the gloryhole that man appears
fit now the opening fills with
a solitary word warm & unpronounceable
at first like an unfamiliar bloom left
in the greenhouse for too long & gone
to seed it will slump there until
you lift its head toward the florescent lights
like you might with an old man’s face
the one spotted recently on his front
lawn bowing down as if to ask the dark clouds
to forgive his wasted life the gathering shame
he must have felt as this cold wind blew through
it bloweth where it listeth
you know the look you’ve seen it before
in the tinted glass of a parked car in Balboa Park
that tricky kind of absolution
only the despairing & infirmed dare to ask for
for the grace that can be bestowed only by
what is absolutely unseen the unseen
each of us hopes to believe will one day be
waiting on just the other side of things
do you accept (2) or decline (27)
2
God that would be your cue do not
leave a guy hanging hardly grasped
soon the warm & unpronounceable miracle will
spill over throats those hairiest wind instruments
cleared & junk will be shoved back into
briefs a fly soon zips which means the solitary pact
between vessel & the invisible is now fulfilled
hands washing themselves in the funky sink & you know
O how odd is it that you get it even before you know
how to shape the words in your mouth
that you are never
to speak of this encounter with anyone else
just as you know without any authority around
how you must wait & listen first for the choir
of door hinges opening their hymnals before
you yourself can breathe out loud
get on up & leave (6)
or sit back down (3)
3
God the interminable waiting & yet
no one second feels like
the last the multiplicity is
mind blowing go on waiting some more (4)
4
God you think while kneeling is that why fags flock
to becoming men of the cloth when you are born
into the closet it is an unknown element the enclosed
space of your daily life often burning with some
facet of the divine your always being on fire & ineffable
plus always having to carry
your closet around with you like the clearest kind
of open wound so that your whole life you
struggle with boundaries
except when two closets touch in public like so
this secular sort of confessional forms from either side
of the divide you pray with all of what has been
missing inside take it O take
it all wait
are those footsteps on the tile floor
nowhere to go (5)
5
God get back on your throne & pretend you are texting
or invisible which people oddly
enough will believe now focus less
on head & more on heady subjects & open your book (6)
6
God dude you have a point there is no reason
to get all religious
our forefathers that unbroken line of queens who
came before us now they knew
how to hunt
handkerchiefs tucked
in back pockets & folded
like the sunset all red yellow or blue waiting to be
spotted though not always quick enough to nab
their first picks from the meat market
with bloodshot eyes most excelled
on bended knee at the stall lips
poised at the hole’s vanishing point & O
so patient or when sneaking a peek at your
neighbor’s goods quiet as monks poring over
a dusty tome all huddled about the urinal trough
or while waiting in line
knowing just when to lock horns
with another’s knowing look
7
God good morning sunshine where am I you
wonder the Heaven on Earth Bldg you turn
naked on your side besides what else would you
put on now other
than the body that you possess the pose that
in time will give you up as you feel the well worn
mystery of stubble from a stranger’s chin
on your thigh & then this
overarching sensation of some brother
father lover friend teaching you who we are
to one another the good sheets tangled up
while outside the moon
wafer thin looks down from the early morning
sky the moment carried away with itself
first in the river & then the delta the tide
later there will come
brightest whiffs of black coffee everything
bagels with lox so now what
stick with not getting what you
want (1) or try this new tragedy of losing
what you have now only just got (29)
8
9
God how did we get here the local jail cell of the universe
halfheartedly you shake the bars of the universe behind you
others seated on the long bench of the universe
the toilet of the universe in the corner appears to be made
of stainless steel such furnishings are not universal
however there is no window
of the universe to speak of which is odd
while next to you this drunk fossil
of the universe dreams aloud as if the cell
of the universe sliding closed had contained
within it its
final opening
when the walls of the universe will once again
push equally against themselves
the iron door of nothing-matters-anymore
locked tight by anything-is-possible
Enough you think just look at that guard he is kinda hot
10
Good now listen hard if
if you’re going to instruct others
on how to live with a chronic illness
Horace recommends throwing in
something like cruising you know
for entertainment purposes
just desserts for fairies like us
remember to dazzle they sigh
with talk of who is
going to die or get lost
tell us
yes let us hear
more about that pansy found
at the meadow’s edge barely
touched was
it by the passing of the plow
also in
your first part darling instead of cock
go back & make it a flower of some kind
you are the poet I do not pretend to know
totally your call
good boy now take your pills & do
not wander off
take pills (18) wander off (12)
11
God here we are just what are we hanging out
do do do fffffffff um is there anything good on
12
Go if you want to go then deeper into the desert of twisted pine
trust me this time I will not follow there you will be free to explore
as you wish & with each snapped twig or clod unsettled
you will know at least I am not the one sniffing your tail
instead I will hang back
& learn the common names of succulents
Yellow Crown of Thorns Aaron’s Rod
Fairy Tongue Sage of the Desert
Variegated Devil’s Backbone
Queen of the Night Day Flower
what else could a life spent kneeling suggest
I am after all your servant Your Homo
Your Invert & Social Deviant Your Cock
Sucker PillowBiter to be called names
your whole life is to reckon they hold some
power yes but what kind
probe further (17) or change your mind (13)
13
Good now that you are here we can begin all this talk
of god names & power is boring my friends
& it misses the point imagine being you instead
at the moment you
find this opening in yourself a hole in
who you are some glorious sweet spot where
you can if you want wait day in day out
to see whether who-
you-will-have-been-forever-now-a-part-of
will happen by whistling a tune or tapping
a foot meanwhile on the surface of things you
can watch the fresh plot
thicken feel the bristles on your chin filthy
enough to come clean each day another bright
opportunity to have soap bubbles light
on your hand & look
at them go sing
to the bubbles now (16)
or listen to them sing (14)
14
15
God I guess that’s true
true enough & enough
to matter but will it
be enough the divine
will it need any shape
from us not whatever
is found in stale sermons
no we are talking clouds
man clouds clouds in & of
themselves & birds
yes & people too all
doing the walk of shame
down the boulevard & not
that smug sun from behind
the scenes of some Heavenly City
hovering in the skies
over the sidewalks that fill
daily with the sad lot of Honey
Forgive Me I Tried
divinity man that
case has been stretched beyond
the breaking point because
from there there are only
two ways to go either
the endless gospel of
winging it (24) or the pin
like scrutiny that comes
with opening oneself (16)
16
God opening yourself up on the other hand reveals another
kind of endlessness no reed after reed
encircling the men’s restrooms of the Emerald
Necklace you have gone off per usual & I am
once again stuck with my reflection true face
for my faces true eyes for my eyes true
tongue for my tongues within the filthy ponds I find
only what is manifest moonlight through mist
the mist forming now wherever now ripples
its form through what is taking place
taking me only so far as the surface
stills when wait there in the dark I hear you call from
the other side of you think you are
you are almost certain it is The Fens in Boston (17)
otherwise Manhattan’s Central Park (23)
17
God sooner or later you will come
to tell the difference between the wind
& your instrument between
the footprints in the mud that are yours
& where the mud has merely settled
for a world without your touch once
when you were young & impressionable
a Seventh Day Adventist said
there is always hope for homosexuals
because it is not an unchangeable condition
like being black or a woman
& it hits you then
just how deeply the layers of oppression are
& all related this hardened
cross-section of hatred mixed with dirty force
Dig deeper (18) or point your
finger at the whole lot (21)
18
God like after the service remember how those neighborhood boys
flew as now their memories do across
the open fields to makeshift forts along the wooded
edge of town from the mind
of your bedroom window watch them now disappear
with each other for a time in what
can only be imagined from a distance to be a secret rendezvous point
made from Red Maple cinder blocks & St John’s Wort
watch them later in life grown men carrying
the nostalgic shapes of those horny looks
with them into back rooms cinema
booths & bathroom stalls wherever can hold
more than one a parade of anonymous theys
wherever their touching wounds can be hidden from view
After all that talk of the miraculous man on a cross
what is boy to do
19
God can you imagine if he exists
at all he has to be taken in all
of him like a boss
or not at all love
is ultimately only made so
because of contradictions this
life-giving & all-consuming pit is
placed graciously at the center of human
existence without our knowing
compare love to a black hole (9)
contrast love with a black hole (20)
20
21
God bud go fuck yourself that was totally you
in the Cambridge bird sanctuary last night
after all the talk of self-restraint there you were
bud on top of bud
on top of bud O so it was you I fucking
called it that forsythia waving all yellow
like a flame with the male cardinal perched askew
like a leitmotif
even this blue dasher pinched in its beak for
good measure I get it you were told
never to look & never to look like this
so your eyes like mine
are fixed on becoming the landscape we search
wherever men are found a new country awaits
this is some good shit (22) take another hit or
throw it all away (25)
22
23
God at last there you are come out
of the Rambles the morning is
opening now like a morning
glory it is our work is it not
in the end that keeps open
the opening of the world
put your heart into it
put your heart into the opening
of darkest fires (24) put your heart into
the opening of moonlit waters (26)
24
Good take it once more from the top this time
make it last add some fresh
kindling to poke your campfire
picture it living
only to burn whatever it is not
with everything it is inside desperate
to get out of all this longing
even as it reaches out
& whirls back up with
all of us
faggots
in a god-filled pit (29)
25
God you know sometimes it’s like I don’t even know
you you know some days you feel like this
sly baritone boom among the distant clouds other
days more like a fuzzy thought in people’s heads
like when a molar gets pulled
the lacy pit of
life’s fatigue filling in with this vacant kind
of bliss like that time you had the whole place
to yourself on Palm Sunday…
the robes worn & the stories you could tell
Make way make way I say
for the absent father you will never face (29)
26
God take a step back if it is
true that hurricanes are never
defined solely by wind strength
or by self-destructive
art but by the presence of
an eyewall within itself
that space arising only
from all the storm is not then
man O man if ever you
wished to remove that hole in
your wind-shook heart consider
not only would you lose
what you call yourself but
also once again all that
you have already lost (29)
27
28
God why keep it going god after god after god
too many holes already in the god
argument no together they pool & form
an even larger hole & so forth so
relatable to have no official
destiny but to desire one endlessly
is that not our fate as well to stop & kneel
wherever we care to
locked within the cells of universal selves
waiting to reveal some small part
to whoever may be beautiful happening by
stopping to catch a glimpse
maybe of that elusive serpent’s tail
while poised there patiently with your
serpent mouth
but to sin without any god about
damn
maybe it’s best to stay put (13) or there is time
still to do a loop outside in the dark (8)
29
To let it all go then no strings attached
only to be filled once more with that empty sound
found within ourselves the muscle made solely to beat
for whatever is not around that built in
beating of ourselves
for nothing more than more
Frederick Speers (he/him) is the author of So Far Afield (Nomadic Press), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His forthcoming chapbook, In the Year of Our Making and Unmaking, was selected by Carl Phillips as the winner for the Frontier Poetry contest, published in May 2021. His poems have appeared in AGNI (Online); Crab Creek Review, winner of the 2020 poetry contest, selected by Keetje Kuiper; Diode Poetry Journal; Forklift, Ohio; Impossible Archetype; Ofi Press Magazine; Tahoma Literary Review; Portland Review; The Straddler; and Salamander Magazine. He lives outside Denver, Colorado with his husband and their three dogs. Check out his website: www.frederickspeers.com