Gateway Drug

they used to show us films once a year to boost

our self-esteem and keep us off drugs--lavish multi-screened

presentations with titles like "The Prize"

that offered soundtracks singing "my future's so bright

I gotta wear shades. Uneaten

lunches and uncovered books fly, everything slams, and blinded

we all get a good, fluorescent look at each other. You are the ecstasy beyond

the gateway, the path

where something opens for good; when, cracked

for just one moment

we are whole, accepted,

unjudged.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Bibliography**

I wrote it. We're black-

clad, smoking, the health teacher's nightmare,

impossibly drugged so that when I touch your clay lips

with my iron fingers, trace your beveled collarbone

with my fluted mouth, the tune I play

forces hallway lockers open with gale force. I whisper, I want

to devour you and the moment you climb inside the world

stops yet we

keep going, launched into oblivion. " We are what we think we are, and one thing

inevitably leads to another--drugs to sex, sex

to cigarettes. A head leaning on a shoulder and suddenly

you're naked, I'm naked, music washing over us

like ocean, air conditioner making it seem magical. But tonight

we are as cool as our daydreams were then,

magazine pages and mirrors, straight-edge skaters, drama

queens, hair gods and punk princesses saying *censored* you

to that girl in the second row. Even

the moon shines off the brick wall

in the back of a Tribeca art gallery, the detritus

of the party around us; here we are

on a couch, making out high like high-schoolers in front

of someone else's locker. Remember being the kid

who had to get your lunch or math book, ask the lip-

locked couple in front of your locker to move? Did you say

excuse me, tap them gently? I never had that courage, shared

a neighbor's book, bought hot lunch.