Posted October 27, 2006
Autumn Night in Cool Dark Blues
(A poem for Bobby who disclosed his HIV+ status on myspace)
We choose our suffering,
just like a child chooses
his favorite color of crayons
and draws a sad face.
We all walk alone sometimes,
in those early morning hours
when the cats are seeking
a place to hibernate in
the cool autumn night.
If I were a child again
I would draw little stars
with a blue crayon
and call it a self portrait
and sign my name
with a backwards r.
Life challenges us
to attempt to explain
the existence of suffering,
especially the suffering
of a child and it makes
me breakdown and cry
at the perplexing question,
knowing there is no reason
for sorrow but to accept
the hurt as it starts to try
to heal the pain.
Some things we suffer for
because they continue to
take us away from each other
determinedly, like a storm
of breaking winds taking
your unbrella away from you.
I have already surrendered
myself to the wind
and hope the autumn night
will carry my words like leaves
of wisdom, safely home to you
and heal some of your pain
with the love and tenderness of
good-bye and good night sweetheart,
wherever you are and
whatever you feel,
I send my love on the wind.
--Ruben Santos Wilson Claveria
Written November 13, 2005 at 2am.
World Aids Day: December 1
Click on blue below:
www.myspace.com/hivsupport
www.iwannaknow.org Information about STDS
www.knowhivaids.org Information about AIDS: This site helps you find a location near you where you can get tested.
www.avert.org AIDS statistics; Every year, 40,000 people are still being infected with HIV in the U.S. and Puerto Rico alone; 6,000 people die of AIDS in Africa every day. An estimated 1 million people are living with HIV in the U.S. Over half a million people have died of AIDS in the U.S. since the virus was classified twenty five years ago.
www.aidsquilt.org Support the Aids Quilt and Names Project in your area: help make a quilt.
www.poz.com Read a magazine about AIDS issues in the U.S. and the World.
www.one.org Help people like Bono, George Clooney, Chris Tucker, and Bob Geldof and millions of others make the world aware that a large percentage of Africa is still in need of emergency aid.
www.congress.org Send you congressperson a note saying you support all AIDS causes.
www.cityofchicago.org If you live in Chicago, you can search this site for Free Clinics under the Department of Public Health and find places offering services for people who want to be tested and treated for STDS and HIV. This is one reason I think the basic affordable health insurance should be available to everyone who wants and needs it. Are free public hospitals like Cook County Hospital enough? I think this country can afford a little more.
www.centeronhalsted.org Click here and read about a new center for the Chicago Gay Lesbian Trangender Transexual Bisexual community. Many links to organizations in the Chicago GBLT community available here. Thank you for your discreet tolerance.
New entry to this blog posted June 16, 2008
Subject: "What Happened?" are the words I should put on my gravestone.
I find it very strange that exactly one year before I posted this poem dedicated to a myspace friend who is HIV positive, I was HIV negative and not in a relationship and still somewhat but not very sexually active. On October 27, 2007--one year after I wrote the poem above--I went to see my doctor on a routine HIV test--I used to get tested every six months--and my tests came up HIV positive. I was with my partner at the time who I met in April of 2007 and I have been faithful to him from the very beginning, giving up the "clubs" for him. We became very close and intimate and by October we were in love and committed with silver and gold rings on our hands. When my doctor broke the news to me, I could not believe it. I was very scared and a little shocked. My hands were shaking as I wondered, "how and when did this happen?" I could only come up with a couple of incidents when I might have been exposed, but at that moment, it felt like someone was trying to sabotage my relationship with Mike, my life-partner. We went to CALOR in Chicago to get a rapid test for Mike and he came up negative and I said, "thank God" and started to cry on his shoulder. November 2007 with Mike was very hard but he remained so loving and supportive that we stayed together to this day. I love Mike so much for standing by me through psycho-therapy and now HIV meds. I found that everyone I talked too gave me hope and told me that HIV meds are keeping people alive and without symptoms of AIDS for years and I felt reassured that I am still going to live for many more years. I am now on a fixed income--SSI and Medicare--but I am not living in misery. Mike is trying so hard to keep me very happy and I'm doing the same.
HIV still gives me bad dreams sometimes. One night I imagined my friends visiting me skin and bones on a hospital bed like someone I knew that died of AIDS in 1990 and woke up crying. As less and less people are dying of AIDS syndrome, HIV infection has become just another chronic, serious but manageable illness. I still write letters to congress at www.congress.org and send the same letters to all people that might help me change the world for the better and create disability discounts for people living in economic hardship. Many people still need that little extra help to get everything they need to survive: food, clothing and shelter. I really don't know what I would do without Mike in my life. He is really a Gay Cherub Godsend.
I started my HIV meds a few months ago and to this day, I haven't had any terrible side-effects. The meds are working fine. My T-Cells are at 511 and my viral load is undetectable. I am enjoying life the best that I can. I'm still reading poetry, listening to great songs and watching good movies. I'm wondering if I missed my calling to become a teacher because I still have so many books, records, c.d.s, VHS movies and tapes. I could open my own Used book store and call it Hollywood Park books and records.
I still tell everyone I come in contact with to use their voice and write a simple note to their congressperson about anything that needs a voice. Mike just got a letter from a White House official in response to one of the letters he wrote after I told him to get involved. That's how democracy works, the more letters sent about a cause, the more power that cause gets. Democracy is always at work too, regardless of whoever is in power. I still believe that people can do great things in the world if they read great speeches written by great people like the speeches on www.Nobleprize.org. Like Clarence, the guardian angel in It's a Wonderful Life said to George Bailey, "Each mans life touches many other lives." And that is so true. There are no victims or victimizers anymore when it comes to healing and medicating the sick. Please let me know what you think about all this and thank you for being my friend through the best of times and the worst of times.
I look forward to more free movies in park viewings with Mike and my friends. Bring movies in the park to your town with www.openaircinema.us I wish they would hurry up and make a movie of the musical Les Miserables because I liked the Hugo book it was based on. That's my wish for the summers to come.