Robert Carr
Before You
there was a youth
before death
he jerked off
his joy
in the mirror
he jerked off
brushing teeth
under pilled robe
in the spine
of open books
on the fantasy
Jonny Quest
on Hadji in
the cowboy hat
of the Rifleman
he didn’t know
he didn’t know
that you
would show up
take the toothbrush
take the robe
the books
the poetry
rip off the story
crack the screen
he didn’t know
that you were out
there waiting.
Robert Carr is a new poetic voice emerging in the Boston area. Robert’s poems draw on his own gay coming of age in the first years of the AIDS epidemic, thirty years of service to people with HIV and other infectious diseases, his long term partnership with his husband Stephen and lessons learned from their son Noah. He lives in Malden, Massachusetts.
This poem is previously unpublished. In fact, The HIV Here & Now Project is proud to say that this is Robert Carr’s first publication.