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