Poetry Friday - Valhalla

Valhalla

the prison of their loving: in a crush,
crammed in a booth, around a table with
the guys. loosened by beer, their elbows brush.
they feel their closeness, breathe each other's breath.

they talk about their grades and basketball
and girls and cars, you know the kind of stuff.
in a more perfect world, talk would be all,
but in this one it isn't quite enough.

if they could rise above their bodies' needs
they'd always stay here, clothed in glory, fresh
together, and rehearsing mighty deeds:
a world of words and visions, not of flesh.

the waitress brings another pitcher round,
not guessing in what guise the gods are bound.

[1978 or 1979]

Poetry Friday -- The best in this kind

The best in this kind are but shadows. Here,
then, I direct who am in life directed,
resolve what, truth be told, I'm nowhere near
resolving. Though in fact you're unaffected
by my affection, here I pull the strings,
and when I tell you "Dance", then boy, you dance.
I wrote the script, I'm waiting in the wings
to take my bow. You haven't got a chance.
But I can't see you clearly anymore.
It isn't you I've got on paper, someone
hollow with a mask, a metaphor,
which you refuse steadfastly to become.
There's no one here to giggle or to gawk.
Reality's a dumbshow. Here we talk.

[From sometime in the late 70s, beginning with a line from A Midsummer Night's Dream.]

Poetry Friday -- How can I call you beautiful?

How can I call you beautiful? In any
bar you entered you would turn no heads
but mine -- you are no ikon for the many
to carry off and kneel to in their beds.
Nor do I think: "But dress him properly,
find him a better barber -- yes, and please,
shave off that awful mustache!" No. To me
you're fine in tennis shoes and dungarees.
Oh, if I wanted Class (Class only in
the vulgar sense), I know the marketplace
where it's on sale: Take home a mannequin,
a perfect body and an empty face.
Let other people queue up for what sells
most dearly. I want you. And no one else.

April 19, 1978

Poetry Friday -- Gracehoper

Gracehoper

Poor little ant, you work so hard and save
so much. So practical, constructing mounds
of earth and stones and food and wealth; so brave
in most things, coward where it really counts.
And I the grasshopper -- you wouldn't take
me home to show to Mother, I who squander
all that Nature gave me. What I make
I toss away, I seem content to wander
on the earth you make your home beneath.
I am boat-rocker, dancer, and nose-thumber.
You'll have shelter from the winter's teeth,
while I can flourish only while it's summer.
Yet I often think that by your grace
I might find summer always in one place.

[early 1979]

Poetry Friday -- I haven't even spoken to you for

I haven't even spoken to you for
a year now; still you lurk in all I write.
How foolish, since I never touched you, nor
had reason to expect I ever might.
Then Dante was a fool, whose girlchild muse
seems hardly to have known he was alive
much less loved back. So why should I not choose
an awkward, nervous boy of twenty-five,
who friend I tried, and tried, and failed to be?
For Heaven's not my goal. I choose to stay
in the Inferno of my poetry,
and write for you till ages pass away.
You'll never know, of course, how you've been used,
and just as well -- you wouldn't be amused.

early 1978

Poetry Friday -- Marriage 2: The Homely War

Marriage 2: The Homely War

Come, I besiege you, let us lay each other waste,
contrive to breach one another's defenses,
engage in combat earnestly till death draws us apart.
Not, my proud beauty, for god or country,
nor for honor do I brave the clash of arms
to call for your surrender: for private glory only,
mirrored in your eyes like smoke and flame.
But sweet it is, and fitting, I should die at your gates,
gnarled and gray and garrulous from waiting.
I will never retreat, I promise you,
the years will not attrite my faith.

Come, less us have a battle, you and I,
while scavenger birds wheel in the sky.
Let us step to the music of their ragged cries
till we are stretched bloody side by side
and must be dragged away to mend and meet again.
I see you full of years, old buzzard,
gaunt and tough, tattooed with scars I gave you,
married to the sword and well prepared to die by it.

Come, let us do away with one another,
unhurriedly, for we have world enough and time.
I am a crafty man, milord,
you won't grow tired of my tricks.
You'll see how I insinuate myself into the cracks in your mortar,
how I entwine your turrets like ivy.
My spies are cunning, they'll whisper me everything,
your shoddiest secrets shall be as my own.
Lay on then merrily, do your stuff,
and damnd be him who first cries, Hold, enough.

18 March 1978
29 March 1978

Poetry Friday - In the middle of the night

This poem was also published in Ian Young's Son of the Male Muse.

In the middle of the night

Awake without knowing it
like the earth on the first day of time
slowly we begin to move
sliding over one another wordlessly
side rolling over side
like strata of earth and stone,
temblors resonating
through bone riding on bone

warm in the forest of covers
your beard nuzzles my chest
a great bear roaming in darkness
dozing off between
each shift of position
asleep without knowing it

Now slick as rain on slate
we slip through one another's sweat
swallowing hard
as wet waves of kisses come
breaking over our heads
falling back against the bed
and penis sleek
and smooth as a seal's head
rises alert and trembling,
the ceiling recedes
like the sea sky into depths of night

We strain into the air
into the rarefied heights of the clouds
breath coming hard/roaring past our ears
beating like the praying wings of birds--
suddenly light
leaping free of the earth's tug
we burst open like morning glories
in the hour before daylight

four a.m.,
through the dust on the window
a grainy photo of the sky
and it's snowing

February 6, 1978

Poetry Friday - Poetry Reading

This poem has confused some people, so let me provide some context. If you don't mind being confused, jump right in.

Since I was writing again, I began poking around the local / university poetry scene, attending readings and participating during the open-mike sections. I noticed that people who were waiting their turn to read would often talk to their friends while others were reading. Aside from the basic rudeness of this, I wondered if they thought anyone would be listening to them when they got to the mike. So I began speculating about the motives of people who perform, including me. (I tried to pay attention to the other readers, and learned a lot about bad college poetry by doing so.) There's certainly some exhibitionism involved, and that gave me the idea for this poem.

"Poetry Reading" has some things in common with this earlier poem and this more recent one. The first one also deals with ulterior motives in performers, and the second one also made some people in the audience squirm -- not so much, I think, because of their erotic explicitness (straight boys read work that was just as naughty), but because they were, like, totally gay. Some years later a friend I was visiting in another city took me to an open mike at a coffee shop. One kid read political poems with imagery like "Fuck Exxon-Mobil in the ass!" When my turn came, I picked up my guitar and sang some love songs to men, which caused uncomfortable silence at first. Talking about sex between men is fine as part of homophobic fag discourse, but not in a romantic mode.

From time to time someone would approach me after readings and ask if "Poetry Reading" was just an advertisement for sex. If it had been, it would have been a miserable failure, but then in those days the very concept of being openly gay read to many, straight or gay, as nothing but an advertisement. (I wonder what all the straight poets were advertising.) It struck me odd that people who were present either as poets or as appreciators of poetry couldn't grasp the metaphor announced by the title. And for the benefit of anyone who may wonder, the kinks listed in the metaphorical ad are poetical too.

Poetry Reading

GWM, 27, 5'8", 135,
well-endowed and sensitive,
seeks audience for oral stimulation
and fantasy.

Light s/m, no b/d, some scat and w/s,
no drugs, no smokers,
your pleasure increases my turn-on,
will answer all letters,
sincere only please.

(Gay white male, 27, 5 feet 8, one hundred thirty-five pounds,
well-endowed and sensitive,
seeks audience

for aural stimulation and fantasy.

Light sadomasochism, no bondage and discipline,
some scat and water sports,
no drugs, no smokers,
your pleasure increases my turn-on,

will answer all letters,
sincere only please.

18 March1978
29 March 1978

Incidentally, this is one of three poems of mine that were published in Ian Young's anthology Son of the Male Muse (Crossing Press, 1982).

Poetry Friday - Delilah

Delilah

He is a man, with a great liking for women,
and women cannot withhold themselves from such a strong man.
Haven't you heard how he went in to the Gazite whore,
how he lay with her till midnight?
And haven't you heard how the doors of the city could not hold fast against him?
He would not be restrained, he carried them to the hilltops east of Hebron.
Then how could I resist? How could I deny him anything?
There is no portal that can stand against him.

His arms, they are so strong, you know,
and I love to be held in those strong arms of his.
And his hair, it is so long and thick and black --
well, in his arms I sometimes dream
it is a lion loving me,
and that is a dream I like:
a gentle lion, a lion that loved you,
his claws held in their sheaths for you,
his teeth kept covered, not to mark you,
and all his power at your service, to protect you,
kneeling humble at your feet --
Well, that is a dream I like.
so why not shear the lion's mane,
to show that he belongs to you?

He is a warrior, is there anyone who doesn't know
how many men he has killed?
The Philistines tremble; I am only a woman,
I can only sit and listen.
In his arms he holds me captive while he tells me stories;
he is the hero of every one of them.
"Out of the meat-eater there comes meat,
out of the strong comes something sweet."
So let his cup be full.
Is it not said that love makes a man blind?

Poetry Friday -- Newton and the Apple

Newton and the Apple;
or, Gravity

There must have been a Devil in the tree
he sat beneath, that toss'd him Knowledge down
(though not of Good and Evil, certainly).
The day would wane, and he still in his gown
would sit unmoving on his bed, his eyes
fix'd on the empty air, and never eat.
As people say, 'tis folly to be wise.
His Wisdom look'd like runes, imprinted neat
as any madman's scribble, meant to prove
how Up and Down arrange themselves, how Light
is made of colours, how the Planets move
through Heav'n. In imitation of the Bright
and Proud, he wanted to explain it all:
as if Men need instruction how to fall.

Poetry Friday - Song of the Signal Girl

Song of the Signal Girl

when its time to railroad
you must railroad
when its time to railroad
i will be ready

goodbye lovey
o the clouds are supported
at strategic points
by the tips of the skyscrapers
its nice to have met you
o the toes of the skyscrapers
are lost in mist
goodbye lovey
o the eyes of the skyscrapers
are lidded with frost
i won't forget you
o the skyscrapers shiver
in their thin new coats
of morning paint

a snap of my fingers
brings streetlights dancing
a clap of my hands
makes the sidewalks sing
a wink of my eye
blows down hurricane fencing
a tap of my foot
makes the doorbells ring

city was my cradle
city was my playpen
city taught my everything i knew

but the sun never rises in the city

Soft railroaders on your midnight trips
all i understand is love between my lips
and i want you there
with your javelin laid aside
to give me time to let me be your bride

--December 11-13, 1970

I'd been vacillating whether to post this poem or not. I feel vaguely embarrassed by it, though that is a reason to post it.

I know where it came from: I'd been listening to Laura Nyro, in particular to New York Tendaberry, and this poem was channeling her. The final stanza was probably inspired by "Gibsom Street", where she sings of sucking the juices from a strawberry a man had given her. Obvious fellatio imagery, though it now makes me think of Christina Rossetti's wildly oral "Goblin Market." I wonder if Nyro knew that poem, which is much better known now than it was then.

I'm not sure whether I wrote it before or after I saw her perform at Indiana University Bloomington -- there's a good chance it was soon after. She played in the university auditorium, with just a piano, which I sensed disappointed much of the audience who knew only that she'd written "Stoned Soul Picnic" and was expecting a full band. Some were fans, though: at one point a male voice called "He's a Runner!" from the upper balcony, but she didn't fulfill or even acknowledge the request. Her opening act was Jackson Browne, who, like her, was better known at the time for other people's versions of his songs -- he hadn't yet made a record of his own. I'd heard of him, but knew little about him, and was stunned when this beautiful hippie boy walked out on the stage with a guitar and began to perform.

"Song of the Signal Girl" seems very uneven to me now, at its weakest when it's most obviously Nyro. But there are some nice things in it. The first three stanzas still seem good to me. Maybe someday I should try setting them to music, and finish the poem/song according to its own inner logic, rather than as a pastiche.

(Image by Lawrence Housman from the 1893 edition of "Goblin Market"; via The Victorian Web.)