<\/p>\n
(1)<\/p>\n
Undoing the knots<\/p>\n
one by one<\/p>\n
like untangling an old pile of string.<\/p>\n
I want to be at home in my body again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(2)<\/p>\n
I remember<\/p>\n
watching the film<\/p>\n
when the tears would not hold back.<\/p>\n
It was when the beautiful boy<\/p>\n
14-year-old gymnast<\/p>\n
graceful as a swan<\/p>\n
talked of being called a sissy<\/p>\n
(fear and doubt suddenly in his eyes)<\/p>\n
and I could not find a way<\/p>\n
to care for him enough<\/p>\n
or for me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(3)<\/p>\n
The young man looks for sensual men to imitate.<\/p>\n
Finding none, he must choose<\/p>\n
between hard strength<\/p>\n
and a feeling he doesn’t know well enough<\/p>\n
to trust.<\/p>\n
He is sad to separate from his body.<\/p>\n
The loss is deeper than consciousness,<\/p>\n
the pain matched only by the agony<\/p>\n
of finding himself suddenly alone<\/p>\n
in a thick and unexplored forest.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(4)<\/p>\n
Who, then, will celebrate the beauty<\/p>\n
of the man’s body,<\/p>\n
that we can love our physical selves<\/p>\n
and not turn to women<\/p>\n
for second-hand sensuality?<\/p>\n
Let me be clear:<\/p>\n
I do not wish to separate from women,<\/p>\n
only to stop looking for them to fill<\/p>\n
that emptiness in myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
(1)<\/p>\n
Undoing the knots<\/p>\n
one by one<\/p>\n
like untangling an old pile of string.<\/p>\n
I want to be at home in my body again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(2)<\/p>\n
I remember<\/p>\n
watching the film<\/p>\n
when the tears would not hold back.<\/p>\n
It was when the beautiful boy<\/p>\n
14-year-old gymnast<\/p>\n
graceful as a swan<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}