It Is Like Visiting One's Funeral, Like

Memory, So Complete And Clear Or So Evasive, Has To Be Ended, Has To Be Put Aside, As If One Were Leaving A Chapel And Bringing The Prayer To An End In One's Head.

I Have Aids. I Am Surprised That I Do. I Have Not Been Exposed Since1977, Which Is To Say That My Experience, Myadventures In Homosexuality Took Place Largely In The1960s And '70s, And Back Then I Relied On Time And Abstinence To Indicate My Degree Of Freedom From Infectionand To Protect Others And Myself.

If You Like To Read, Sometimes It's Interesting Just To Go And See What The Reality Is, Of The Word, Of The Seedy Or Not So Seedy Fiction Writer, The Drunk Or Sober Poet... Sometimes You Can Go Looking For Illumination.

God Is An Immensity, While This Disease, This Death, Which Is In Me, This Small, Tightly Defined Pedestrian Event, Is Merely And Perfectly Real, Without Miracle—or Instruction.

It Bothers Me That I Won't Live To See The End Of The Century, Because, When I Was Young, In St. Louis, I Remember Saying To Marilyn, My Sister By Adoption, That That Was How Long I Wanted To Live: Seventy Years.