My Daughter Insists I'm in the Closet

Madeleina insists I'm in the closet and should come out openly gay. She may be right, but as long as I get erections looking at my ex-wife and other women, and don't when I look at my man pals, well, I'll probably stay inside. Still, today she was talking about having to present a poem to class. Not one she wrote but a poem by someone else. I reminded her that we have a small collection of maybe 60 books of poetry that include some of the very best poets--not all well known at all--of the late 20th Century, as well as a number of other books and collections from different eras.
   Then she surprised me and said her all-time favorite poem was one I wrote. I couldn't remember it--I used to write a lot of poetry--and asked her which one it was. She laughed and said it was one that I'd told her I wrote for a friend in college who came out of the closet and asked my friend Phil and I--along with a couple of others--to watch and march with him in the annual 5th Avenue Gay Pride Parade, probably in 1970 or 1971.
   Then I remembered it. Here it is, and the only reason I'm sharing it is because my baby loves it. And that makes me proud.

Ideal love
Created above,
Is not enough
To keep us here
From going queer.

Let's get the marriage thing done, people. Equality works. Inequality never works.