If E=mc², then how fast is my mind moving right now?
Follow me: there is a boy in the cane fields
praying not to be found. It is not the father’s belt—
no, that is only a small source of fear—but the other

boys that frighten him, the boys who beat him, kick him.
And then, as if to puzzle, the biggest of them will hold
him down, kiss him, the bully’s hands unbuckling
belts. In this, children are no different.

Anything else in the world seems better
than this image, these boys. Schoolyard, noontime,
the clearing just beyond the wide expanse of cane,
the shallow caves down by the seaside.

Follow me: can words really hurt? Do actions
speak louder? Sissy, homo, faggot. Could these
be real ammunition? There is a beach in Ibiza,
not a cane field in sight. There, in the early evening,

I saw a man bend slowly to kiss another man.
I assumed they were lovers. I assumed they
had known each other for many years
or had met at a bar earlier that afternoon.

The young Italian who had been kissed rose
and walked along the shore toward me. As he passed,
I told him it was beautiful, that kiss. But the mind
is never fast enough, you see. It is never fast enough.

The eyes saw what they wanted to see, saw tenderness.
But there was nothing like that there. The kiss?
It had been a warning. The kiss meant change your ways
or risk harm. Brutish, that tenderness. Sharp, too.