there in the wet room tiled like an abattoir
these boys opened their towels like the velvet curtains at an opera house
and I opened my mouth to sing
III SHAME
Shame, too, makes identity.
EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK
[have rubbed myself against bark]
have rubbed myself against bark
to feel a touch different from my mother’s
filled my mouth with soil for a kiss
pulled the buds from an upright shoot
shoved my shorts down and sitting
pierced by the wilderness
face wet with want
felt loved
which is another boy’s
torture and
the sky was pixelated tv
and shame
scabbed my lips
shut
[mostly because I had been re-reading freud]
mostly because I had been re-reading freud
paraphrased by bersani the finding of an
object is in fact a re-finding of it when you
Freud/Bersani
spanked me six seven times before penetration I
thought about dad whacking my thighs for drinking
bleach that one hot summer in new malden
nestled towards the back of the shed beside a
mallet cloudy like lemonade it didn’t burn
exactly but felt wrong in my mouth like
bone so I yelled for help which was two dad
fingers rammed down my throat chunder
then the open fist the one who protects the
one who tends who was gentler I wonder both
Freud/Bersani
bearded chests lightly furred like weasels
[even if you fuck me all vanilla in]
even if you fuck me all vanilla in
out slow responsible vaguely tender
it’s still not regular intercourse
even if we’re missionary the hairless
backs of my knees against your shoulders
it’s still an act of protest even if I’m
moaning at a respectful volume
even if you’re wearing an extra-strong
condom even if I make you cum
on my thigh not inside even if I
fall in love as you pull out flop over
it’s all still a middle finger up flaming
rag stuffed into napalm revolution fuck-
ing anarchy we are still dangerous faggots
[you slug me and]
you slug me and
just for a second I forget how pathetic I am
lips all prickle fizz of blood
those middle-range pleasures that make up everyday life
are nothing for me
Foucault
find me in solitary a rose
garden of bruises
fist flat of the palm back of the hand hollow hand
Vatsyāyāna
these are your tools my
limit-experiences
I need you to be my black-site interrogator
ask the terrible questions of my flesh
unearth the nail-bomb of my heart
beat the queer into me into me
[no muscular fields just scrub and]
no muscular fields just scrub and
butcher-boy works a zero-hours contract
at romford meats ltd
glittering knife ebayed he
wields a chainsaw to halve
the ruddy carcases the
very air is close with proteins and
on his lips offal-
flecks bone-shards
there is that in me
I do not know what it is
but I know it is in me
Whitman
and he cannot cut it out
it needs to be fed
[under neon lights my arms glow scar-]
under neon lights my arms glow scar-
tissue crescent-moon weals these
healed but not forgotten medals of a
childhood trend to grab wrists forearms
on the playground and clasp down
dig nails in for the squeal and blood I
can’t say I didn’t like it though this
touching this sticky wince the twist of
flesh the fresh wounds smiling up at
me these days I wear my scars like a
bandana to mark my preference my
fetish they read take me home rake
your nails across my body make me
feel like a kid again make me bleed
[but our crab shells are orange]
but our crab shells are orange
barnacled strung with sea grass
in them I cannot see heaven just
the tanned forearms creamy skin of
every boy whose thigh I licked before throat-
ing their cock men change when you do this
reek of power want to jam your head down
gag you not so bad to die like this maybe
Doty
maybe and the grey sand rimed with oil
diesel rainbows is littered with death
so many exoskeletons glinting at dusk like
sweat beads on a man’s body as he bucks and
cums and mark says we cannot know
Doty
but I know that sex will kill us all
[5am cadaver-slack in my arms]
5am cadaver-slack in my arms
I’ve no clue what
you’re thinking
there are limits to me limits
to my understanding terms like
spiritually liquefying speech
love
Bersani
slip by me
still this one reverberates like
a wasp in a paper cup
the boy is in love but he has no idea of what he loves
Socrates
none of us have ever known what we’re doing
homos each one of us opaque as rose
quartz I am so lost
[legs straight as you go forward knees]
legs straight as you go forward knees
bent to pick up speed all those times you
swung so high and thought the taut chain
might buckle and the green park was a paint
smear and each lungful of blue air ozone oh
you didn’t need a push could do this all on your
own the backs of your knees bruised scabby
and still this feeling uncanny weightlessness
upon walking into the bathhouse each half-
smile nod sneer pushing you further into the
steam maze until you come to a man prostrate
waiting for you and something like vertigo
pushes you onto him inside him and you
move fast and rough like a kid on a swing
[are you looking for me in these lines]
are you looking for me in these lines
like a urologist examines piss for blood
come sit with me
and I will tell you all the truth I have left
how touch is everything and
underneath sex is your beginning
pick up the glass shard the bent paper clip the razor and
dig with me for more answers
I too am not a bit tamed
I too am untranslatable
Whitman
by now you should know that
shame is cellular real
as the shiny blood drop rising ripe
calamus root sweet flag on your inner thigh
[how could I forget the hot-faced]
how could I forget the hot-faced
trauma the instant rash-jam that spread a
sunburn across my face neck ears
ages nine to twenty-two when a boy
looked at me or looked away my blush
we called it except for dad w
ho said
what family are you a member of
but shame is my birthmark semaphore
of blood vessels skin-stain a shame-
prone person is a person who has been
shamed says eve still I don’t remember
Sedgwick
the stone just the ripple-flash of heat-
pricks moving from shame to shyness
to shining I hated still hate this body
Sedgwick
[people say shit like it gets better]
people say shit like it gets better
but what they mean is there’ll always be haters
only you’ll be older
you are twenty-seven when your father says
gay people die of terrible diseases
you are twenty-eight when a poet says
makes for uncomfortable reading
you are thirty-one when your father says
don’t tell anyone you’re my son
you are thirty-five when a poet you love writes
that’s so gay
the world has given you a silk rose
dyed all the colours of sunset a polystyrene
peach love I mean shame
[you spit in my mouth and I]
you spit in my mouth and I
taste petals was always a
sensitive boy and really what’s
changed the rose garden at
two am here I shade and
hide my thoughts flowers
Whitman
close in on themselves like
fists and men are walking
beneath the vines tell me how to
celebrate myself twenty years of
Whitman
feeling for body parts in the soil-
scented dark and all I have learned
the opposite of shame is not pride
[shame on you faggot for bending whitman to your will co-]
shame on you faggot for bending whitman to your will co-
opting him into your self-help circle-
jerk willing him to yawp across the tattered ages just for you
when you aren’t even his type he liked them younger
hopeful and all those other theorists what did you think
leo
paul
mark
jean
eve
michel would be your fore-
faggots signpost your backdoor out of shame shame
on you faggot and shame on me an italicised quote is no talisman
all this must be lived through a second puberty this burning
(… and if I can just push through this decades-long blush this
SHAME SHAME SHAMEFULNESS
will there be something waiting for me
a distillation of self a
queer beauty
purer than memory certain un-
flinching wide-eyed
a fabulous transcendence …
and in the deepest offal-shadowed parts of myself I feel the
thought of myself
free from shame but made from shame
… is shame to be valued only at the moment one no longer
feels its inflammation
Hanson
no shame is your gift from the world to the
world that fucked still fucks you)
[I am the homosexual you]
I am the homosexual you
cannot be proud of
turbulent fleshy sensual breeding
Whitman
I am the boy your
father would beat
or fuck
I spent my formative years
at urinals
defacing the grout
W I L L I N G M O U T H
my scraping like a boar’s tusk on bark
piercing through the world’s contempt
Genet
I am not toxic am residual
Sedgwick
IV SOHO
Oh My Soho!
for Daljit Nagra
All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine …
WALT WHITMAN
I
Urine-lashed maze of cobble and hay-brick! Oh
chunder-fugged, rosy-lit, cliché-worthy quadrant. I
could not call you beauteous but nightly I’ve strolled your
Shaftesbury slums for a bout of wink and fumble.
Or hopped the iron-wrought gates of Soho Square, dank-
scented potagerie, to harvest night-blooming buds under ripening
street lamps. Or sloped to the Broadwick bog-house
where the cisterns trickle in harmony like the three-stringed lyre,
where the glory holes flicker pink-tongued. Or jumped the queue for
MANBAR video bar, sweaty fluoro-phoenix risen from the
foundations of MARGARET CLAP’S molly house. All this in lithe
Eros’ crosshairs, queer angel atop the meat-rack of
Cleveland Street. Eros wants me cum-crazy, boshed on lust,
but I need a clear head for this trip. I am to be homo-historian –
mean to turn Biogrope to biography, foreskin to forbearer.
Oh my Soho,
let me linger out tonight. I have rainbow warriors to exhume …
II
So who first kilned the homo holy grail? Was it the hunky
Spartans, those man-on-man love missionaries who queered our
leafy Roman-outpost? Or did changeling Jove himself, god-talons
sharp for boy-flesh, his comely-white feathers, fashion our same-
sex revolution? Was Soho still Fleet-pasture then? Ganymede
dozing on his crook, horned goats swelling the coppery paths?
And who might we salute for imported whips, banishment, sober castration,
point-and-stare-in-the-marketplace marble-heavy shame?
See, for a man to pierce a man with anything more than just a dick,
e.g. AMARE,
was patheticus. Even Hadrian’s bust-worthy boyf, Antinous,
dredged sopping from the Nile, reborn a pink-dwarf constellation,
suffered his queer temples to be sacked and plundered
at the hands of Constantine’s Christian gentrification. And didn’t
Caesar’s bullying become blueprint for our own colonisations?
Filching glittering hoards of conflict minerals, leaving our subjects with leather-
bound copies of Leviticus. Centuries of sodomites caged for what?
An aqueduct, Regency marble? And didn’t we learn the consul’s trick
of bread, circuses, the gruff gladiators’ bloodstained six-pack?
Still, what is Rome tonight to the t-shirted ladz bumming menthols in the disco line
other than Caecilius est in horto? Other than an HBO box set?
III
Silver-crowning Soho, throbbing within the white marble halls
of our British Museum, is the Warren Cup. That
Uranian chalice of Victorian naivety. That blueprint of queer
hope. Smithed when Roman homos would meet in
secret. Unearthed, buffed-up when us homos would still meet in
secret yet worshipped by Warren’s velveted posse as a
symbol of freedom and reimagined, fetishised as forward-thinking!
Still there is more to queerness than just trans-historical
bum-fun. More than the cup’s glittering nostalgia of myrtle wreath and
leather strap, of embossed bearded boy-love, of gilded lithe limbs.
What about the modern homosexual’s plea for lifestyle, joint-
lodgings, legality? What about love? Oh my Soho, Warren’s
cup is no wedding cup but a how-to-fuck cup passed around at toga’d
orgies. A mischievous relic. Every empire, ours included,
has done its savage best to stamp us out, redact our mission – its
violent reception from the permanent collect
ion.
IV
Oh my Soho, you are my museum tonight! Show me instead our true
lineage. Show me the off-stage trauma, the sentences for
sterile acts, the gleaming shears, the specific dismemberments, the
smouldering pyres. Show me the Poland Street pillory,
where even in Warren’s faux-progressive epoch, boys would hang
their blue-eyed heads in shame – all now just pissed-on tarmac.
Oh my Soho, recall for me the WHITE SWAN twenty-seven. Hauled from ale-
soaked interiors into the frowning dawn, paraded by the Peel
Street Runners as dangerous poofs! My brothers, may I call you
brothers? The billowing rainbows of Beak Street still mark
Soho Page 3
