i was a pretty young man
tall and slim, blue-eyed like mum
with dark brown longish hair
and naive tattooed upon my face
who the older men would find as
pigs snuffling out hidden truffles
safely buried in a dark, french forest;

they came one after the other
like the fat man from Gatineau
who would spend his time
relaxing in the university hot tub
eyes next to the naked showers;
he would cajole and encourage
“come with me at the end of the day
we’ll have dinner together
and you can see my cottage in the hills”
and i, not wanting to offend
i would simply respond with
“no thank you i have class to go to”
and slowly wander wet and away.

there was the old man in the limousine
who pulled next to me late at night
as i was walking from somewhere
to another somewhere still off and away.
“how about i give you a ride home?”
and he would beg and beg and beg
stalking slowly for blocks in the dark
and again the answer was a quiet
“no i’m good but thanks for the offer”
trying to get smaller and fall into shadow.

or once when i was stuck in Toronto,
i had missed my connecting train
and was wandering lonely with suitcase
through Christmas Eve streets past midnight;
and finally under the Royal York
sitting in a closed cafe with two others
a silent, sleeping middle-aged stranger
and an elegant, wealthy old man
who was prowling the tunnels
like a snake in the tall grasses.
“you should come to my room upstairs,
i have food and wine and we can talk
and pass the time…come with me, come with me
and i will give you money and a car to take you home
we could be the best of friends my small maus…”
but weary of it all i simply said no thanks
and wandered to a private corner to hide in fitfull rest
full of dreams that saw me beating him to death,
as a proxy for every blood-soaked wolf,
pounding my ever-present pain into his brain.

i was a pretty young man
with a thin film of agency
learned from having been
a beautiful boy
whom the men would find
and take into the darker evenings
with their pick-axe hands
where they would mine innocence
until i was empty and hollow,
a haunted house abandoned
of the dream that created it

i was a beautiful boy
unwrapped and consumed
then thrown cold to the street
left crumpled without the promise
of what once was new
of what once was fresh
that lured them from their corners

i was a beautiful boy
who learned too late that ‘NO’
was a wielded word of power
thrown like a life-preserver to chaos
that i could hold onto
until i drifted to safer shores…