twilight men

You look vibrant today
said old Mister Gazzola
to his server of seventeen, Nicole.

Its not every day
you’re called ‘vibrant’
I teased her in the kitchen right after,
It might not happen again.

He’s an asshole she
said dumping nibbled ruebens
and wadded napkins in the trash
and dropping the plates in racks
I hate him. She is pink-faced
and hard.

Later at a meeting for Obama
volunteers, concise strangers,
one among us spoke doodlingly
and rabbity-toothed.
He admitted not owning a car.
People nodded
with tight and smiling
patience.

I remembered him. I had seen him
in the waves in August
floating near the Korean wife
of a friend. You’re
beautiful he said. She was bobbing, pregnantly,
she was just months in the country,
smiling Thank-You
not knowing how to parry
what she did not know was a trespass
on property.
I stepped in:
he disappeared,
skinny body up the beach.

In the meeting he emitted reedy
honks and toots of breath
somehow.
We did not let our looks be seen.

Is beauty to scorned men a sun
sunk on horizons further and emptier than normal men’s?
Sinking deeper than hope
it grows great.

To dare speak its light,
to presume a devotion,
they are brushed off --
freaks, pilgrims,
lost men,
to linger in
their early night
where obstinate suns
refuse to set.