Another poem. Another bit of history. It appeared in TAURUS Poetry # 15, Fourth Annual Special THANKSGIVING Issue, 1984. It’s included in my forthcoming book of Seminar Poems. It deals with real stuff.

BLUE JEANS IN RUSSIA

Blue jeans in Russia!
Sell like hotcakes in Tokyo!
Denimized the world unites,
A common cause of faded fabric.
Better used, the living legs
Breed others’ comfort. I
Who let my last pair go to salvage,
Awaken to the global clamor
For the outworn product of my lower limbs;
What joys I knew in that close cling of second skin,
The easy access to my masculinity,
Identity projected there in fitted blue;
Yet girls interchangeable, these pants, my pants,
What transformations of extremities beneath the flowing flesh…
So it has come to this, at last!
A bridge across each curtained ism,
Humanity meets leg to leg,
A unisexuality,
A common zippered crotch!