DIFFERENT STROKES (1980)

my body went electric on me
in 1980 -- all that basement party
french-kissing and adam ant's

ambiguous dressing made my face
break out; i found the logistics
of making out distressing, soft

flesh pressing hard against my
shy insistent parts, the pounding
of our craven hearts, craving more,

surrounded by low art and high
hopes, the groping pleasures of
dark places i'd never felt before.

DAMN

"nothing you write before
40 is worth a damn."

10 yrs past yr damn dead-
line, get a load of me now

still writing, still
don't know how.

1980

who expected j.l. and j.r. 

to disappear, shot down dead 

in an uneasy year? a cliffhanger 

and a bed-bound bohemian

brought together by bullets, 

fictional and delusional as pac-man

and post-it notes began to stick, 

predicting pokemon go and facebook: 

YES! we believed in a winter miracle

although NO, we would not go to moscow, 

and so we iced summer dreams 

of soviet gold while deciding reagan 

was not too old; we sentenced a killer clown 

to death and suffered saint helen’s
 

fiery breath. as macaulay culkin was birthed

in manhattan, stuart goddard was reborn as adam.