James Kirkwood kept his gayness in check

Good Times Bad Times through me as a teenager

College genre made me jealous

Never left home

P.S. Your cat is Dead made me laugh

Chorus Line made me Cry

The Pulitzer for the gypsy stories

Culled from actor’s tapes

His flourished pen never failed

Except with Mary Martin and Carol Channing’s Legend

The bio of his entertainment family roots

Clarified little

Dying of AIDS like so many of his era

Brutal honesty to his queen mother

Books I could hold and ponder

Shared with Paul

Fragmentary slices of a writing

Bellowing through heaven

Someone remembered him

His frustrating recognition

The final acclaim that disappeared

Wake me from my nightmare

Of leaving the world without

A proper sendoff

That isn’t stillborn

No children or generation to take my baton

Just my scrappy thumb drive holding

My memoir harrowing secrets

That no one will give a shit

Except the parish of love

I culled.

 

James Kirkwood Jr. – Wikipedia