boy from a purple house

i am in love with a boy.

many of you will stop here

as i am a boy too,

but others will go on.





my lover is from a small town

where you take your sunday drives.

his family home a little shack

painted in the wrong colour,

a colour that makes him more ashamed

than the car parts strewn in the yard.





many of you will stop here,

but i go on in love with this

boy who's father secretly hates blacks,

who's mother drinks in the morning,

this boy that says h'low instead of hello;

who wears boots in summer





most of you have fled,

embarrassed for me, ashamed for him.

you are the people who wear all

black to funerals, or keep fedoras

in the back window of your cadillacs;

who write letters in christmas cards





but my boyfriend doesn't know

a cadillac from a cavalier and

would sit cross legged with a crooked

smile in a fedora.

© Michael Ernest Sweet