Gay Love Poetry

by Neil Powell (ed)

  PAUL WILKINS

  My Tired Darlings

  My tired darlings, with what swift

  tact they leave before its light.

  Their January steps crack ice, the clear glass

  breaks to webs; my darlings pace to

  families, overdrafts, subtleties.

  They wake to noon in their beds,

  thinking through speeches that for them

  are regret or revenge or that one long truth.

  They work in bars, in whitewashed attics

  they suck at their smoking lives,

  they talk of their children who need them more,

  they press hands flat across aching eyes.

  Their explanations to tomorrow

  flicker in their throats like injured things.

  They have to get back, my tired darlings;

  they are wanting to be elsewhere and themselves.

  Their tongues flick swiftly across upper lips,

  tasting what hasn’t happened.

  You can imagine it, its on a Tuesday,

  there’s no one who knows.

  They don’t want much of this, my darlings,

  but tired white fleshes lie down again,

  fat candles blub their wax, a voice is dressing afterwards

  and murmuring the number of a cab-firm.

  I love them, their moments of winning,

  thinking they choose their havens and departures.

  Knowing the long world wants them for its own,

  they pat their pockets for keys, small change.

  MARC ALMOND

  The Puerto Rican GoGo Boy

  The Puerto Rican gogo boy

  Gyrates in front of me,

  Hard body of the slums,

  Hard mind of the street.

  He has his two front teeth missing,

  When he grins

  His face resembles a splintered fence.

  He has spots on his cheeks

  Dope in his eyes Murder on his fingers

  (Not in his heart)

  Only ‘mom’ in his heart.

  On his shoulder a purple sore

  That draws me in Fascinated:

  On his forearm his true

  Love etched into his flesh

  With a rusty switch

  He thrusts

  And his cock bounces joyfully

  Against the satin finish

  Of his black Adidas shorts,

  To the muffled disco beat

  He strips,

  And grins

  And you’ve just got to love him.

  And he juts his hips towards you,

  A five dollar bill tucked into the elastic waistband

  Of his black Adidas shorts:

  Bringing you a Latin word of love in your ear

  And perhaps a sloppy kiss if you’re over forty

  And loaded:

  It worries me,

  I got a sloppy kiss, the word of love.

  He sits

  Legs apart on a small stool

  To remove his cheap trainers,

  His grubby white socks.

  He grins and rubs his crotch,

  The over forties go wild

  With the five dollar bills.

  He removes his shorts,

  His dick is average

  And refuses to harden,

  He tugs it, twangs it

  Pulls it and pummels it:

  It died!

  The (lucky) few at the front

  Get to gum it,

  Slurping and spitting it.

  The Puerto Rican gogo boy dances on

  To ‘Call Me’ by Blondie,

  To ‘Disco Inferno’ by the Tramps.

  I follow the tracks up his arms

  To gaze at the purple sore.

  The torso a tight washboard,

  A steaming ploughed farm field;

  The muscles gold and defiant.

  He loves his work.

  Afterwards ten dollars buys you a private show.

  His name is Roberto.

  DAVID KINLOCH

  In Brompton Cemetery

  Quiet seeps in

  on the bellied drone

  of planes.

  A patter of squirrel

  feet fall like rain

  across the tombs

  and spirit my

  glance to Prince

  Bibesco. Moss

  unletters his name;

  so many half-

  caught: widow

  of, infant, dearly.

  Grass ears fritter

  away and offer

  occasional unknown

  wild-flowers, the

  tangled dark

  at the bole of trees,

  half a bench

  fraying into shadow.

  Pigeons examining

  my feet are far

  from ghosts

  and only Richard

  Tauber’s grave

  sings against

  forgetfulness,

  bedecked in pansies,

  the high C of a single

  iris. Lichens

  resist each note

  we strike here,

  the true tenor of it:

  just web and brief

  silver, the beaten body

  of the earth.

  A strafe of

  melon seeds

  pave you to the picket

  fence of a white

  quiet canton

  and the rip boys

  aged 21 or 23 who

  served, defended, rest.

  Other ones pad by

  outside in designer

  names that flare

  the cemetery blur,

  ignite the spokes

  of lycrad cyclers

  who lap them, alight

  among unconsecrated

  colonnades and await

  the tryst. Pot-bellies

  amble their desire

  among the athletes

  and there the game

  of seek and seek

  begins: a lithe

  of muscle suns

  its walkman on

  a slab: his silver

  shades annealed

  like salamanders

  to his eyes.

  A hot wind uplifts

  choruses of stares

  across the unkempt

  stones and all aches

  to be fenced

  in a corner,

  asked for a momentary

  name. A little blond

  manfully defends

  his plot, watches

  the slow summer-

  stunned bee crash

  the asphalt, shed

  a wing and wipe its eyes.

  JOEL LANE

  The Outline of a House

  Its safe, you say, nobody walks

  through here. Its not a street any more,

  just a blind alley. At this corner

  they’re demolishing a house. But nobody

  works at this time of night. Follow

  me through the scaffolding. This way.

  This was a bed, it could have been

  our bed — this paved rectangle

  between a shallow trench and a wall.

  This was someone’s roof, this brick height

  that nurtures a bleached flower, while

  stars hang like pollen in a distant shaft.

  Crouching, you pull me down to the pavement

  like a condemned building. I lift you

  until your filament burns itself out

  and a shattered moth flies to the dust.

  We are holding each other. This

  is home. We can leave it behind.

  STEVE ANTHONY

  Life Drawing

  for Clive

  If we’d been straight, coming out

  of our station off the last train,

  you wouldn’t have noted the fit of my jeans

  as I pushed through the ticket barrier.

  I might not ha
ve seen the small red pin

  on the charcoal lapel of your overcoat;

  you wouldn’t have shot me a look

  among the late suburban stragglers,

  and I definitely wouldn’t have followed,

  paused, followed you down that dark alley

  where you’d stopped for a piss (you smiled

  Got alight? — of course, I carry matches);

  I’d never have kissed you, fallen to my knees

  in the bushes, your belt buckle clanking

  as somebody passed only feet away;

  I wouldn’t have walked you home by the lake

  where the moon made pearls of the sleeping geese

  and a screech owl drew us closer.

  And maybe if we hadn’t done all of this,

  though we never did turn into lovers,

  we’d have missed this other sharing —

  talking through lines of Gunn or Hockney

  as you sketch me on your bed,

  my only prop a finger of whisky.

  ADAM JOHNSON

  Early November

  The day was gold early and I went out under the wind

  Over the vivid leaves as they were singing in whispers —

  A high day with a blue brim riding the roof-backs,

  Leaving the trees red in amazement at their own brightness.

  Down Piccadilly to the Circus on a sleak fourteen,

  I went, in my long coat, into the heart of town,

  Alighted, danced with several people, kissed one I knew

  Whose cheek was blushed with cold, called at a bar in Poland Street,

  And overheard the discourse of a dozen thirsty souls.

  The day was cold early and I went back in sudden rain

  Under lamps, by windows flushed with light in upper rooms,

  Among people dancing out of offices and stores

  Into the brilliant streets and the cool ballroom of evening,

  Over the dark-drowned leaves that were singing in whispers.

  R.M. VAUGHAN

  10 Reasons Why I Fall in Love with

  Inaccessible Straight Boys Every Damn Time

  1. cause when he laughs at my jokes or tells me he likes my

  clothes it can’t be anything but the truth.

  2. straight boys speak a foreign tongue I never learned —

  a semaphore of scruffy chin tugs, bearish shoulders, and

  dead dog easy posture, straight boys can spit, far, and

  seem to like urinals.

  3. a straight boy will always hate opera and will never, ever

  play some god-awful Whitney Houston record before he

  feels you up on the couch — straight boys like guitars.

  4. cause foreign films are for girls with glasses or nervous

  Anglican boys who went to private school — and Yes,

  Thank You, he does eat meat.

  5. straight boys don’t trust their fathers either.

  6. a straight boy will wear a tight T-shirt no matter how fat

  he is. I call this Innocence.

  7. ok, yes, even if does have three kids and two monthly car

  payments and at least one house he still has more money

  than most of the fags I know and Money = Relaxation.

  8. cause once I went to the Y and I swear to God four

  straight boys massaged each other buck naked and talked

  about body fat ratios and not one got hard or even a little

  glassy-eyed and I knew, I knew I was on another planet

  and I have always wanted to see the stars up close.

  9. straight boys remind me of children — big, hapless, grown-up

  children with sex organs it would be right and legal

  and far more interesting to touch.

  10. because women don’t really trust them, they’d be better off with me.

  LAWRENCE SCHIMEL

  Using the Poets Bathroom

  for R.H.

  The Greeks were only half correct

  that a woman might turn mens flesh hard as stone;

  yours, perhaps, would not grow erect

  at the sight of her, but of her own she has

  complete control. Looking inward,

  so like mirrors’ truths, Maude, too, turned stone: topaz

  gems that floated in her bladder.

  You tell this tale to explain why, like a male

  dog, she lifts one leg to splatter

  the black plastic sacks of garbage with her scent,

  a splendid anecdote about

  your discovery that she was a latent

  hermaphrodite. But there is more

  at stake than regaling friends on midnight walks

  with Maude, who had waited hours

  for your return without an accident. Such

  is the devotion of women

  and dogs; the strength of will to endure so much

  time alone, sustained only by

  the idea of commitment to them. Maude

  held tight to her purpose. The gay

  mans best friend, it was not in imitative

  flattery she tried to grow a

  penis, but because she recognized your love

  of sameness over difference.

  A threshold she could not fully cross, her attempts

  at genital enlargements

  contradicted your earlier lines: a choice

  that always, when there is a door,

  even a French one, must be made. Sacrifice

  her identity, though she tried,

  Maude was left whining about sex and her

  crepuscular gender, outside

  your bathroom door. In that earlier poem,

  Max, too, whined; for both dogs the word

  toilet clearly suggests the twilight, some

  subliminal ending. They were

  restricted to those parlours overflowing

  with your public life, books and art:

  needlepoint pugs on pillows, porcelain pugs,

  pugs in every medium, all gifts.

  Pigs, too, for they had monopolized your thoughts

  before your vowels lengthened. On

  an island of vowels, Odysseus

  had come to know and love swine.

  Returned to Ithaca, his sole memento

  amori was a piggy bank —

  two copulating corpulent pigs into

  whose corpulent bellies he dropped coins

  for his sons wedding. Only his faithful dog,

  after sniffing at the mans loins,

  had recognized him. Though too short to reach

  men’s crotches, Maude could smell where your

  true affections lay. In your bathroom, where flesh

  is exposed from its civilized

  garb, ostensibly free from all onlookers

  except that narcissean gaze,

  there is no room for animals. Photographs

  of men cover every surface

  (the ceiling even!) as if this were a hive,

  each man locked into his own frame

  like a cell of memory’s honey, and when

  the shower fills the room with steam

  these boys, unlike bees, do not flee. Mentors, friends,

  lovers, the men who have shaped your life,

  it was yet too soon to know if I would stand

  among their ranks. I stood before

  their ancient glittering eyes and unzipped my

  pants. I could not hope to compare.

  III LADS’ LOVE

  ____________________________

  Love poetry — regardless of sexuality — has always had a natural inclination to celebrate the beauty and desirability of subjects who are significantly younger than their admiring authors (also regardless of the fact that the young are ignorant, vain, selfish, unreliable ...). This section includes poems which lament the passing of youth (as the ancient Greeks and Romans almost invariably do); which record the poets devotion to
a younger lover (Shakespeare, Ackerley); or which recall a time, perhaps only the day before yesterday, when both poet and subject were equally youthful — most of the poets towards the end of the chapter were, after all, still in their twenties at the time of writing the poems. It even includes one or two hints about all that ignorance, vanity and so forth.

  The longest item here, Richard Essendens ‘Effects’, is a beautifully balanced sequence about a man-boy relationship which begins in the authors adolescence and develops into a long-term affair: it is a fitting reminder that while an anthology such as this one may be divided into more or less arbitrary sections, life itself bridges the divisions in sometimes unexpected ways; it is also, I think, a marvellous piece of writing.

  SOLON

  Translated by J. A. Symonds

  ‘Blest is the man

  Blest is the man who loves and after early play

  Whereby his limbs are supple made and strong,

  Retiring to his house, with wine and song

  Toys with a fair boy on his breast the livelong day!

  ALCAEUS

  Translated by Mark Beech

  ‘You’re getting hairy legs . . .’

  You’re getting hairy legs, Nicander;

  Soon you’ll have a bristly bum.