Gay Love Poetry

by Neil Powell (ed)

  But I have not forgotten our delight.

  — And to my surprise, the hotel’s name

  was ‘Sayonara — a fitting one for a brief

  encounter started between two stops.

  EDWIN MORGAN

  Christmas Eve

  Loneliness of city Christmas Eves —

  with real stars up there — clear — and stars

  on poles and wires across the street, and streaming

  cars all dark with parcels, home

  to families and the lighted window trees —

  I sat down in the bus beside him — white jeans,

  black jerkin, slumped with head nodding

  in sleep, face hidden by long black hair, hands

  tattooed on the four fingers Aden 1967

  and on the right hand five Christian crosses.

  As the bus jerked, his hand fell on my knee,

  stayed there, lay heavily and alive

  with blue carvings from another world

  and seemed to hold me like a claw,

  unmoving. It moved. I rubbed my ear

  to steal a glance at him, found him

  stealing a glance at me. It was not

  the jerking of the bus, it was a proposition.

  He shook his hair back, and I saw his face

  for the first time, unshaven, hardman, a warning

  whether in Aden or Glasgow, but our eyes held

  while that blue hand burned into my leg.

  Half drunk, half sleeping — but half what, half what?

  As his hand stirred again, my arm covered it

  while the bus jolted round a corner.

  ‘Don’t ge’ aff tae ah ge’ aff.’ — But the conductor

  was watching, came up and shook him, looked at me.

  My ticket was up, I had to leave him sprawled there

  with that hand that now seemed so defenceless

  lying on the seat I had left. Half down the stair

  I looked back. The last thing I saw was Aden

  and five blue crosses for five dead friends.

  It was only fifteen minutes out of life

  but I feel as if I was lifted by a whirlwind

  and thrown down on some desert rocks to die

  of dangers as always far worse lost than run.

  FRANCIS KING

  The Address

  I did not think that I would care

  After that last shrugged-off caress

  That I should still be here, he there,

  The distance might be more or less

  And more or less my brief despair,

  When I was given that address.

  I did not think that I would lie

  Upon the grass where we had lain,

  Willing upon the vacant eye

  A face I would not see again —

  A face beneath that foreign sky

  Which now could only bring me pain.

  I did not think that I would take

  Train, bus and mule to find that spot,

  Sealed in the hills beside a lake,

  Where everything was green with rot;

  But otherwise how could I break

  That odd and unrelenting knot?

  I did not think I’d care at all,

  Being so tricked, but none the less

  My body ached as from a fall.

  Strange that the cause of my distress

  Should be a thing so very small —

  A false address, a false address.

  THOM GUNN

  San Francisco Streets

  I’ve had my eye on you

  For some time now.

  You’re getting by it seems,

  Not quite sure how.

  But as you go along

  You’re finding out

  What different city streets

  Are all about.

  Peach country was your home.

  When you went picking

  You ended every day

  With peach fuzz sticking

  All over face and arms,

  Intimate, gross,

  Itching like family,

  And far too close.

  But when you came to town

  And when you first

  Hung out on Market Street

  That was the worst:

  Tough little group of boys

  Outside Flagg’s Shoes.

  You learned to keep your cash.

  You got tattoos.

  Then by degrees you rose

  Like country cream —

  Hustler to towel boy,

  Bath house and steam;

  Tried being kept a while —

  But felt confined,

  One brass bed driving you

  Out of your mind.

  Later on Castro Street

  You got new work

  Selling chic jewelry.

  And as sales clerk

  You have at last attained

  To middle class.

  (No one on Castro Street

  Peddles his ass.)

  You gaze out from the store.

  Watching you watch

  All the men strolling by

  I think I catch

  Half-veiled uncertainty

  In your expression.

  Good looks and great physiques

  Pass in procession.

  You’ve risen up this high —

  How, you’re not sure.

  Better remember what

  Makes you secure.

  Fuzz is still on the peach,

  Peach on the stem.

  Your looks looked after you.

  Look after them.

  QUENTIN STEVENSON

  Hampstead Notebook:

  The Boy with the Broken Arm

  Chin raised

  he breathes through closed eyelids

  and the upper lip tightens

  with the delicate old man tremors

  of a face reaching for sun.

  Canine clamped

  to the nail on the index finger of his left hand

  the arm trailing

  while the other

  in its losers cast

  not one signature offered or asked for

  a months shame in the white

  beats time on his belly

  to the music of whatever makes him smile.

  Blue tattoo

  which tonight he’ll need to wash off

  clematis also blue.

  He likes the angle of his crossed leg

  the first chafing of sweat

  the heat trapped in his crutch.

  But now he would like without opening his eyes

  to undress.

  The man who has passed three times

  and stopped once

  will not go on waiting.

  Well here I am.

  But do not expect me to look at you.

  I’m different.

  And mad.

  I spoil things.

  Everything about me is wrong.

  IVOR C. TREBY

  Incident on the Central Line

  you zipped up too fast when the train came in

  reluctant to stop you left it too late

  there under the arches at Lancaster Gate

  the metal teeth bit through the foreskin

  i stood and watched through the tubetrain door

  as you your game with the other forsook

  saw your whitening face and your stricken look

  the bright line of blood on the floor

  three nights later the dried stains bear

  witness a moment you’ll not soon forget

  i see your face when these drops were wet

  and the smile that even then lingered there

  PETER DANIELS

  Liverpool St

  Meeting without meaning to, crossing the marble floors

  of the refurbished terminus, we celebrate with food, choosing

  station pastries or cartons of burger-fries; and we talk

  on the train, o
r sometimes we don’t; sometimes that matters,

  for reasons of living together, making our way home.

  Tonight on the five-forty-five, the couple sitting opposite

  get working on separate crosswords, like in-trays of invoices,

  till one anagram calls out for the full attention of two;

  and silently they distribute all of the concatenations,

  finding between them the unspoken words to balance the clues.

  Catching up with each other halfway to where were going

  any day is a likelihood, and an unexpected extra.

  We meet in a station, or we coincide in the bathroom,

  we cross and merge in parallels less than a pillow apart:

  joined-up people, finding the world as wide as our bed.

  JOHN ASH

  Following a Man

  I was following a man

  with a handsome, intelligent face

  (the cheekbones high, the nose straight, the lips

  sufficiently full), and judging by the shape

  of his neck (an unfailingly reliable

  indicator in my experience) a lithe, athletic

  figure; or, to be more exact, he and I were merely walking

  in the same direction along Seventh Avenue,

  having earlier stood side by side in the Old Chelsea Post Office:

  the day was Friday, June 9th, the time late afternoon,

  and after only two or three blocks,

  each full of particular events and distractions

  (such as dogs, clouds, paupers, hydrants, hairdressers),

  I began to feel that I was almost in love with this man,

  that, like a song, I would follow him anywhere ...

  Something about the way he slicked back his hair

  delighted me, and I admired his beautiful raincoat

  which so enhanced the easy masculine grace

  of his movements. I was concentrating hard,

  trying to take in all these details without giving

  any cause for embarrassment (either on my part

  or his) when he swerved into a newspaper store

  between 16th Street and 15th, and I could think of no

  plausible excuse for following him into that meagre space

  where, surely, our eyes would have been forced to meet,

  and I would have blushed (he being protected by a light tan).

  In all likelihood he is lost to me, as

  he would have been had that door been

  the door to an elevator in an apartment building

  bigger than all the pyramids combined.

  Even if he should prove to be my near-neighbour

  I doubt that I will ever see him again,

  since in New York there are always too many

  neighbours to keep track of (you hear

  their footsteps, their voices and their music,

  but it is difficult to attach these attributes

  to a particular person, in much the same way

  that an archaeologist may uncover the fragments

  of a mirror but will never know the face

  that, day by day, was reflected there)

  but it is not as if he were dead. He exists

  and will continue to do so for some time, perhaps

  for many years, and as I walked without hesitation

  directly past the store he had entered I was overcome

  with a sudden feeling of elation at the thought

  that it was within my power to record this incident

  which is unexceptional

  as the budding of pear trees in their season,

  unrepeatable as the first sight of a great city.

  STEPHEN TAPSCOTT

  The Queens

  One queen squeals as the other retreats,

  flings a drink after him overhand,

  baptizing the bystanders, making a scene

  the two apparently need to create:

  some hissy diva-drama, obscure and public.

  And I’m soaked. Even my socks (a last-minute gift

  from M. at the airport, saying take care of

  yourself meaning I can't say this,

  I can hardly stand this) and suddenly

  I’m standing in a bog. What am I

  supposed to do? Do I squeal too? I

  don’t owe them that. Do I laugh benignly,

  as if this whole embarrassing business

  were funny, were my idea of fun?

  Do I smile knowingly (the Older Man,

  wiser and gentler, in expensive shoes)?

  Or suck in my belly and scowl (yes Daddy)?

  Or stick out my belly and growl at some kid

  (please Master) as if he were to blame for it?

  None of these options feels like freedom, exactly.

  The flannel-plaids and sleeveless vests

  settle for a shrug, a side-long chuckle,

  a manlier grip on their beer-bottles

  ... and the tide subsides. Two college sweatshirts

  boogy in place, locating each other

  by echo. I’m getting too old for this.

  I know why M. needs it — the practice,

  the disco, the visual flick of desire,

  the shock of being wanted: because it is difficult

  and possible; because a young gay man

  needs to be given, over and over, permission

  to need; because he is handsome and he feels

  darkly that somehow this affects his life,

  not yet that beauty like his is a gift

  to console him for his youth. He is young

  and will be hurt, and hurt others, in time.

  — because having grown up in this culture

  a man has passed the standard social rites

  and needs to return, to do it right

  the second round, to learn the rules of pleasure

  and honesty, party-behaviour and sweet

  repression, as a queer and decent man.

  It’s a funny business, this sex thing,

  so thorough and so incomplete. The queens

  are dancing now, shirtless, rolling their waists,

  and their solitude is terrifying. They enact

  for us something more rooted than politics,

  or privacy: that we are people, an ‘us’,

  a community ... but of what? shared need? Can

  such affection matter, if we offer it

  beyond persons — to any hunky trick,

  or to men collectively, or to some man,

  lucky particular, who summarizes

  for the moment what one seems to want

  for the moment, for the empty weekend?

  Is this display itself a kind of tie,

  an icon of raw want? A community,

  what is that? Do I mean a collection

  of the brave and the needy, of whom

  these feral dancing boys,

  posing and turning in the hard music,

  are our ambassadors, shamans, poets?

  Maybe I’d explain it that way to some judge

  who stood beyond the threshold of the subject.

  [Note to myself, for future sonnet:

  embarrassment', a form of jealousy;

  implies the judgement of an uninvolved

  third party; not shame; laughs-with? Develop.]

  This scrimmage of allegiance and resistance,

  I wonder how it differs from any other

  citizenship a grown man chooses. These are

  my people. We danced together into the camps.

  And yet we embarrass me, and squeal,

  and pour beer in my favourite socks. These years,

  anyone can die of misjudged sex:

  we know, we all

  know. And know too a man can wear away

  from solitude: no one is immune.

  How can I be too proud to be here,

  when I feel the same urgency

  that moves th
em, dancing? Shocked by joy, to see

  in the torque of that long boys waist the same

  white turning as M. s, his torso, when he winds

  a towel around himself, so pure it sears me.

  The symmetry of it: we are one body and are

  each apart. Though whether this lurching fugue

  of sex and its pulses are the effect

  or the fact of the loneliness, curse

  or the first cure, whether this dancing

  exposing their waists can make them happy

  (as I am for the moment, liftingly happy),

  who am I to say for them? I can say

  we are a people, whatever that signifies

  in language or in longing, or in belonging

  exactly through this pulse and its common

  motions, or through this saying, obliquely

  for us all. The queens are lofting, angelic

  now. The T-shirt with the kind moustache

  has asked the skinny overalls to dance

  (as he had hoped there shyly, glancing);

  Big Daddy (even his cigar is leather) is buzzing

  over the boy in the wire-rimmed glasses,

  they sway as the sinuous music passes

  through them, they are discussing

  insect-images of sexuality in Proust... We

  are one body; we lift and embarrass me —

  and I’m grateful, I realize, may be

  for that most of all -: we amuse me,

  in the vast implausible surprise

  of being here ... though its getting loud

  in this blue cellar; its late; its packed; the crowd

  is turning younger, and the hot smoke burns my eyes.