An Ode to Maurice Sendak

                I’ve never liked kids.

They make me weary.

They make me wonder where we keep our beasts.

I wonder what it is they dream.

I wonder what they think it’s like to die.

                All my characters are a little queer.

Everyone knows how to be queer.

Everyone puts on a show, especially the kids.

It’ll be that way until we die.

Hell, you know oddity doesn’t end for the weary.

                I want to draw the way we dream.

There are spaces in our minds that only know of beasts.

Awful beasts.

(You know they really love the queers.)

We tend to lurch into the nightmares they make of our dreams.

                No one ever stops being a kid.

Imagine a boy who never stopped being weary.

He’ll take the aches to his death.

He’s spent his whole life preparing to die.

“This way,” he says, “all I do is dance with beasts.”

                Wild rumpus keeps the body weary.

I never told my parents I was queer.

I’d known since I was a kid.

Boys kept finding their way into my dreams.

Never had such sweet dreams.

                I often think about what we’ll miss the most when we die.

I’ve raised a lot of kids.

We’re all in love with the same beasts.

Family knows little blood for the queers.

We only share in each other’s bony weariness.

                I am the boy who is always weary.

In the end, what stops us from writing down our dreams?

What do we pass on to the young queers?

What should we leave behind when we die?

And how about those terrible beasts?

                Will they look like our kids?

Tonight, the kids will sleep when they are weary.

They will wrestle ravenous beasts out of their dreams.

They will know that everything dies a little bit queer.