PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I have not, before this, given a poem to J.J.,

whom I had known since seventh grade and

through senior year in high school.  His surname

also began with a J, hence his c.b. handle (acquired,

like mine, in the summer of nineteen seventy-six).

But the pressure of relentless, parental disapproval

had never squeezed the life of his soul almost to

expiration.  His blonde hair, straight and parted in the

middle, cascaded to a length that almost reached his

waist.  He often wore long-sleeved button-down shirts---the

wristcuffs always unfastened, and his collar button and the

next two below it often unfastened provocatively.  Even

during the seventies, before and after graduation, he

preferred straight-leg jeans to bell-bottoms; but, even

more distinctive, was his almost constant habit of

attending the schoolday's classes entirely barefoot.

He was often reprimanded, from classroom to classroom;

but the prejudiced administrators and instructors had

been privately ordered---by a person whose words

they dared not defy---to avoid official confrontations

like detention, suspension, or expulsion.  JJ was not

alone in this; his best friend was Karling Epps, whose

closely resembled him in all details; and each morning,

after arrival, they removed their shoes and socks and

stored them in their lockers.  In those days, certain

statements could not be admitted; but I know, for a

fact, that several of the varsity, lettered athletes were

attracted to them.  JJ and Karling were beautiful

adolescents (I am recalling a historical aspect,

forty-four years after the fact).  Their slender frames and

agile limbs, along with their delicate facial features

(especially those deep eyes and shy smiles), and all that

softly silken hair (and they were natural blondes, as a

chosen few of us learned, in time) indicated that Eros---the

force, but not here considered a divinity---had formed them for

exquisite and delectable experiences of homoromantic love.