Jeremy R. Quintero: Poetry.

I’d lose everything if I had to go back and start again. A failure repeating age three at 27. The thickness of the fog rolling into the undercurrent of meaningless passerbys. A glimpse of a fumble from a train. The children as what we derive the meaning of life.

I was once an animal with two horns and no spine. I crawled out of the earth on two weights attached to my arms. Escaped from the prison where we trudged through the cold, soulless streets. Underneath this skin there is a human heart. I was once an animal pleading from the rooftops of older men.

In these strange shoes, I tore a hole into myself. Buried my bad blood beneath the floorboards of the apartment. Strangers reaching for medicine  between the space of two lines of poetry. Glances from the street. Where the end reaches the beginning. A threat to all living beings.

With your mouth, I kissed lips made of gold. A heart made from the fibers of broken airplanes. I kissed to feel something.

I.

a slip of the tongue into his mouth,
picturing how the two of you kiss
with such a filthy mouth as his;
teeth grating over skin–

evoking the shaft of your penis
with a flick of a lip;
knobby-kneed and slack-jawed
along toothless grin cherubim

adrenal fatigue for the fist.

II.

part of it was your dumb lips.
you kissed like a chump, a straight boy
with two eyes separated by a soulless
brain, kept me apart and chose myself
for the sutured light.

another thing was how well you sucked
off the other boys in the room. you were
no beginner. you pretended like bottoming
would hurt you. it slid in way too easy
for you to be virginal.

I used to think someone would love me. Operation somewhere else beyond my body. I thought more about the landscape. Where his manscape turns mediocre yellow into clear white. Time spent in Los Angeles burns me underneath my skin. Sunset Boulevard looks me dead in the eye with dead eyes. Are you just like me?

Where semen-stains remain. A pundit for manic panic. I used to think someone would love me. But I’m only average at all I do. Jack of all trades, ace of none. We sixty-nined until ten to five. I chose you for better than this, but my dead eyes were too bleak here in this motel. Are you still wishing?

I thought I could be something more. I used to think someone would love me. But all my luck ran out. Sex as monetary payment. Where we reside when we get sick of worrying about money. Here on the ground, I am better off like dead leaves. Where eyes are dead. Somewhere near Chinatown.

Operation SEX. I’ve never been to Fire Island but I am borne of a failure to seize the sex. I’ve never been to Fire Island but the men are too good looking for me anyway. I’m a troll on the streets of West Hollywood, where the men troll for sex. A puritanical fucking in the backseat of his Audi. Where missing sleep causes me to miss you.

Operation sex, three little letters with less intention than affection. Every chance I was given to display the goods I burrowed back into myself. The urinals where men with money wag their dicks at me. Downtown Los Angeles, Union Station, a man once watched me, wagging his dick at me and waiting for sex. I ran to the arms of my then-boyfriend.

Operation who gives a fuck. I’ve never seen the other side of Mary but I’m betting she’s lubed-up with the scent of sixteen. A plain picture of a moment I missed between your bedsheets. I could name them all but I think I might forget them. By initial: D/E/L/R/C/K/J/M/J/D/R/J/A/R. I know there are more but that just seems slutty of me.

Operation gay for pay. There is a way to behave when you’re beneath the floorboards, listening through the peepholes and participating in glory hole fucking. Every man has his price. What’s yours?

Operation sex for money. On my best behavior, I am just like the rest of them. I am no more a man of the cloth than I am a man without a condom. Where the ache causes me to feed the pain within. Where you can see there is more that I am not saying.

Fact-checkers never bother to ask questions, they just assume. What’s the point of trying if you always feel you’re losing? A nation born of wound. Wound deepens sleeping next to you.

We hurt when we allow ourselves to hurt. Thickening of the skin to say goodbye. A maladjusted sycophant. Lipstick stained penny flavored colonoscopy.

I tried to reach you but couldn’t. If it all ends I will say fuck the séance. The difference between the movement and the standstill. I will always be last on your list, stop pretending it’s more than that.

I was labeled an idiot of my own discourse. A chord breaking my heart. A pint of Guinness running through, ruining my veins. My veins across your back connecting us one by one. I believed you when you said it could last forever.

I was chasing the ghost of my past. I was clueless to what faced me in the mirror. Brickbreaker shit-blaster heartbeat. Caffeinated wanderlust. I was labeled an idiot of my method and slack-jawed muscle. Chinese food served by Mexican waiters dating German hookers with Jewish doctors.

Just bend the pieces until they fit. (Just bend the pieces until they break. You always did.)

I was labeled a cosmic mindfuck. I was a journey to the soul hoping for more than what was always in front of me. Haunted by the past and weakened by the reality of a spoonful of sugar. A metaphor for something more than what my life turned out to be.

Raymond, Raymond. You will never be your father or your grandfather. Your name will always be Jeremy. You will never amount to live it as well as they did. You will never live it like they all wanted you to.

Inferior. Why it still hurts, I’ll never know. The happiness once sought. Sophomoric poetry. The Pope of Black Hats. A shifted, jilted, stunted boy at 26. 

All by myself, I’m so much better on my own. The magnetism between us now that we’ve switched poles. A disagreement between two waterfronts. My body aches 395 times a minute.

When you look in the mirror. When we look in the mirror. What ache for loneliness. What heartache, what heart attack. A choice between two overgrown fuck-ups. All alone on a Friday night.

My own little world is what I deserve, ‘cause I am the only child there is. Black like the horizon we stretched on beaches to rise above the deep. A zest for life; a zeal, a caveat diminished. Stoned, or stone washed.

(If I say it, maybe it will go away. Watching the two of you together, happy, rips me apart. Because I will never be as happy as you. And that’s the truth. Green eyes, go away.)

Flattened out sketches of figures I once was. A plaid withered truth. I caught the wind in my face, age 15. Authority figures as fugues for tin horns. Patience with disregard to virtue. I sketch my body with ink and oil. A lifeless cog caught in a machine.

When we turn to stone, our skin cuts and burns with tendency to skid. He doesn’t love you and he never will. Every boy I’ve ever loved. For certain, I will fall if I take one more step towards the edge. A razor’s brazened muscle tone with tonality for longing.

I am nothing more than so much more than what we were. How our secrets untold turn into fairy tale whisper and weasels stuck in the cog. A Christmas spent unwrapping lies. Lives left ordinary and molten against the grain. When we turn away, our heads find us buried in the clouds. 

A tendency to ache. A craving for love untold. An ache to drive far away.

You forgot who you were. Winter 1986, born into a world where you would always be the odd man out. Do you remember holding hands with torpedoes? A fraction of living at a fraction of the cost. You will always be a part-timer.

Somewhere between Amen and Hallelujah there was a novel aching inside of you to get out. Trapped between the cum of two men who always pitted you against yourself. No one understands your art. You forgot to learn the art of fitting in. Clothes made for men worn by a boy with two left hands and a mouth full of crooked teeth.

A question of likeness between two amoeba spores. I am a candle burning for the act of valor. Age 19 age 20 age 21 age 22 age 23 age 24 age 25 age 26. One of these things is not like the other, but all of them are exactly the same. You let everyone get to you before you could get to yourself.

When you look in the mirror, who do you see looking back at you? A cliche phrase is my best description of myself. You’re a faggot fantastic. You’re a faggot. Fantastic. Sarcasm note dripping onto the page. How do you solve a problem like Jeremy Quintero?

Looking out past the runway, I dream of big city lights. With you, I always dreamt of desert nights. Stars filling the deepest black, endless. Hands together in a circle. Prayer upon the ashes of our forefathers. A lack of foreskin between us.

Naked, eyes blue (green? blue), wrists cuffed to a bed of electronic devices. You woke me up with a panic and I slipped a twofer in your pocket. Clad in only our underwear, skin touching skin like we are sinning. You make me feel like you’re sinning.

I do my best now to ignore the what-ifs. What if it had all been okay? I refuse to think about it. Your cheating heart would have been the end of me (nearly was). A fleck of spit on your lips upon the lake where we never kissed (it was dry back then).

How do you curve your body? How do you curve my name? How do I curse your name? It was easier when I hated you. It was easier before I knew you. Before I knew any of you. Back when my only responsibility was myself.

Gun-kissed smile in the back of the trunk. You never made me cum.

Your life needs to stop bothering me so much. I feel trapped by your niceties and bludgeoned by your actions. A six-year wound that refuses to close shut. Suggest I should shut you out.

Where would we be if she and everyone else had been okay with all of it? Would it have stood the test of time? They did it to us. You did it to yourself. I did my best to untrap myself but got hooked in your fishing line. I was the bait for your sexual experiments. A showcase of lust that I couldn’t quit. I fell for you, a favor you couldn’t return.

You keep fucking up my life and I keep forgiving you for it. You’re barely worth a poem most days of the week.

Concentric circles form in the palms of your hands. Targets for the nails to be hammered in. Martyrdom akin to palindromes. Madam I’m Adam. Sleeping late to become part of the progress. I am shellfish, I am slaveskin. I am burnt sienna in a college-boy’s noose.

Where your hips lie, my words failed you. I spoke too soon with gunshy lips. A splendid expanse of flesh. A shit-eating grin of panic attack and cocksucking. Turning tricks across countries. Your body, two continents forming to break apart Pangaea.

I narrowed my eyes without thinking. A bruise on my cheeks for my insolence. This can wait until morning, when I have clear eyes and a clear head to figure out how to get out. Firehouse prose. When we are forced to choose the ones who love us more. When we are forced to split the loci of control. A summer panic.

Where words lose meaning, there is always patience in the depths of wound. Where losing the daylight means the promise of tomorrow. Where I turn to stone. Hearts tuned to the radio wave, where banner waves turn us into photographic edge.

Where I fit into no particular mold. Not enough of any particular thing to create my identity. Nothingness. The pains of being plain. Torn my teeth on new knees. Watching as the patience fails you. Watching as you turn to stone.

Where my lack of identity is an identity. Where I compare myself to everyone and find I’ve fallen behind. I am a boy who got left behind. I am the past ignited. Carried away with light leaks and bad photography. Angular. Pear-shaped.

Flowers for anniversaries. A sketchbook of failed relationships on display in the MOMA. I want a change of seasons. Person to person shirking. Why wasn’t it me? Why does it matter? A shift in the personal pronouns. Him versus I. Versus me. Versus everything I guessed about my life.

Don’t wait. Why do we wait for arrivals and departures to display our anxieties? Pictures that make me feel bad about my hips. The unbearable desire of being. Choosing the sky above for guessing at pictures of zoo animals. We’re all wishes longing to break out of the cage.

Finding the one person who you want to spend every waking moment with. Man to Man. Finding the one person who you miss, even when they’re next to you in bed. Longing to be wanted. Aching for being. Aching for meaning. When meaning validates you.

Limelight.  The burden of being home alone on Saturday night.  My right is gone.
Youthful flutter bridges the gap between the loneliness and the lamplight.  Etches.
I sketched my prose on side table mirror, waited for my telephone to stop ringing.

Waiting for the moment to hit you when you’ve realized you’ve wasted it all. 26
is the age when you finally notice all of your friends have gone away and grown up.
Aging begins to construct itself like a paint-by-numbers. The cuteness of 19, gone.

Like it or leave it. Redneck country in a small-town epicenter. Pale like my sweater.
Another series of manic depressive glances and beautiful pity fucking.