I Remember

I Remember

- photo by James Gavin on Fire Island,  June 2016

Following high school graduation,

my  classmate Bob Behling

took his movie star looks

to a modeling job in Greece

where a swarthy pickup from an Athens gay bar

mugged and knifed him to death.

I remember.

From an open shower in our basement apartment

naked  roommate Joe baited me

until I admitted that, yes, I “liked it.”

He launched into a rage

deriding and beating me with his fists.

He was suspended and I left school forever.

I remember.

Left as a living scarecrow

tied to a fence in Laramie Wyoming

Matthew Shepard died at the

hands of torture and beating

by two gay pretenders whose hatred

turned robbery into murdering rage

I remember

So many memorials

left us to deal with an ignorance

telling us it was all divine justice,

this horrid ugly deathly AIDS left

kindred survivors sad , alone, and shamed

as community turned its back and shunned us.

I remember

My dear friend Frank DiCecco was a college professor

who built a harpsichord, grew prize orchids

and who , in a sterile call from a Chicago precinct Captain,

I learned was bludgeoned to death with a ball peen hammer

by a tenant who simply  did not like

his “Alternative Lifestyle.”

I remember.

Now I have 49 more hapless fallen

added to my list of memories,

soullessly murdered in Orlando

losing pulse to a psychopath

who could not deal with

his own sexuality.

You can bury all the bodies,

but not the memory .

-Jerry Wendt 2016