1.        I will always mean what I say.

(In all things art, put quality first.
Being a dick can fly, to a point,
if you know they’ll coin it “sass.”
Shake the dice. Switch the code.
Girls and gays: that’s Bible. Pre-Bible, really —
a duo waaay back to cuneiform slabs. Not
really. It’s all too yum to make stuff like that up.
I been Mister Jester from the jump,
stay tellin’ tall tales. Stay worried
what could come if I stop being fun.
How the glances change, how they might do me,
what I might do.)

2.       I will always do what I say I am going to do.

(Never ever date a babe with your name.
Put some drama in each umbrella unfurl.
Walk like you know where you’re going,
where you come from.
Like a too-loud blouse from a not-close friend,
discomfort’s a gift I’ll quickly return.
I’m a bill on Capitol Hill;
I sing the body electorate.
Your contracts for you ain’t for me to sign.
If contraction’s not an option, be massive:
Fagamemnon. Break any rule that would break you.)

3.       I will always be too expensive to buy.

(At brokest broke I took seven caramel chews
from a book launch, ate ’em all, called it a night.
Was this a queering of dinner?
Time is money in that I got neither.
My sweet friend Mikey once paid half my March rent.
Though I’m not much one to pray —
I sit by a dad who resembles my uncle D
with a baby in a stroller lookin’ just like one
of my cousins, we’re waiting for the A train, I’m dying
to tell him his son, a sleepy, pouting
dahlia sprout,
is so angelic, so darling,
but no guarantee it’d go well,
assumptions create assumptions
create silence — I’m not a girl,
not yet a father,
who the fuck am I
to this man but guise
of gay voice, gay shirt, shadow, beard;
the A arrives, we board separate cars —
my eyes shut with the doors.
I hold tight to the handrail, ask something please,
please, hold them.)