in November

Hi my friends,

The poem I posted on Nov 19, ‘Growing up gay,’ I wrote in 1984. The words have stayed with me and have become part of my writing DNA. Some lines are quotes from pop songs and all of it is my 24 year old voice trying to say meaningful things from the fairly solitary place I lived.

Over the years drawings and writing often occupy the same space for me. In 2008 I began to work with a few simple drawn characters who have come to people the broken narratives I write. These not-quite-narratives or stories take bits from my personal life, histories recollected from obsessive reading, and fantasy – I don’t draw much distinction among these sources.

The poem below, ‘…it was a night,’ is drawn as the border of a drawing of two of these characters. This placement makes a continuous loop and requires one to hold the drawing and turn it in one’s hands to read. This panel is one of several introductions to ‘Polley and Droolus’ (a black blob and a white diamond shape) although this particular panel in the series comes two years after they were ‘born.’ These ‘books’ are from 5 to 13 pages long. Some are one-sided and some are two-sided.

and it was on a night

it was a night they would remember

the friends

and the hills

and the highways

and the night

the silent call

the murmur

the place they made theirs

the traces disappeared

the lights

and the people

behind the lights

passing without seeing