MURDER

Eight years ago this month,
Richard died. Heaving heavy body up the steps of a bus
out in the San Gabriel Valley.
Heart attack, it was official, there was an autopsy.

Sure, overweight, with high blood pressure.
And he did insist upon the busses.
To save money. To identify with the poor.
A gesture of eccentricity,
like the dyed orange Mohawk that one year.
Like the vest he had made out of the splashy red obi
I brought back from Tokyo.
Still, I think it was the AIDS drugs that stopped his heart.

The drugs and the panic:
Sero-conversion past his fifth decade.
After everything else, the irony was not lost.
It was one of three times we cried together, the night he told me.

Really cried, I mean,
Like when my moonshadow mama died.
And when I went into rehab.
“Just a Cholo I picked up at Elysian Park.
I let him fuck me bare.” Normally,
I would have joked, you know:
“Good sex, at least?”
The smell of shame sealed my mouth shut.

In the litter of paper, piles of it,
He found a single article.
A new clinical trial.
Aggressive experimental drugs.
A reverse sero-conversion, back from positive.
Administer immediately upon infection.
It was just like him, fucking dilettante.
The drugs could save him, but the side effects were murder.

That’s what I think.