35. Poetry

35.2. Poemotions

35.2.6. Text of book

Start of page 256 in the book

Part Eleven

Homosexual Love

Prologue Eleven 257

Uncle Stout 258
Liberace 260
Platform 16, Victoria 261
White Cheek 262
Wake Up Boy -It's Time 263
Goodbye Black Lover 266
I Could Have Dried Your Back! 267
Gide and I 269

Start of page 257 in the book

Prologue Eleven

Well what can I say about all this? In my day such things were not talked about. People kept quiet concerning all
that same-sex bodily thrusting and heaving. Nobody liked to mention it; indeed nobody liked it.

The problem is that humanity has been confronted, through no fault of its own, with a fleshly paradox. Our buttocks are obviously designed by Nature as a human seat. The hole in the middle is plainly intended to extrude unwanted solid and gaseous by-products of the brilliantly-designed human digestive system. All well and good, but Nature has taken a wrong turning here.

The trouble is that buttocks, especially when youthful, are also
configured to arouse sexual desire. Their curves look enticing, and often they cry out for the hole in the middle to be pierced by a prick. I apologise for using that vulgar term for an erect penis. My excuse is that here it is appropriate and necessary. Nothing else will do, and a poet must always seek to use appropriate words. That is what he is there for. That is his function.

The poems here seek to cast a fitful light on the powerful nature of male homosexuality. Meanwhile the dingy prodding and thrusting goes on, in and through places not intended.

Moreover the practitioners now claim that rights (that is human rights under the law) are on their side. On the side of the prodders and thrusters. The disgusting prodders and thrusters. What can we do, Mrs Flue? Why nothing. It is all part of the zeitgeist, which one is not allowed to resist.

Listen to me, said Uncle Stout, there are some things that life is about. I lived across the road from Liberace. American youth, U.S. boy, back you go from Gatwick. Entwined without attraction, clasped by shared knowledge - nothing more. When I saw you first - you with your afro hair... Goodbye black lover, leave all the pain behind. O Ken Brown, at eighteen you were splendid - and true to Beth-in-the-wallet. We are agreed, myself and André Gide, so much at one, in such complete accord.

Start of page 258 in the book

Uncle Stout

I

Listen to me, said Uncle Stout,
there are some things that life is about.

It isn't that mug
on the feminine neck.

Neither those bumps
you yearn to stroke.

Nor those pins
with the crack between.

It's an oily crack, said Uncle Stout -
that's not the thing that life is about.

II

A lad was Doug, a new fourteen,
when Uncle Stout explained the scene.

Doug shunned that mug
on the feminine neck.

Felt the bumps
were nature's joke.

Disdained the pins
with the crack between.

It's an oily crack, said Doug with a shout;
that's not the thing that life is about.

III

Listen to me, said Uncle Stout,
there is one thing that life is about.

You must love a mug
on a masculine neck.

Start of page 259 in the book

Stroke a chest
that's lean and trim.

Find some pins
with meat between.

It's delectable meat cried Uncle Stout:
that is the thing that life is about.

IV

Young Doug tried his best for Uncle Stout
in search of the thing that life is about.

The mug mugged him
on its masculine neck.

The empty chest
had a hollow ring.

The muscular pins
felt strange to him.

The meat, he explained to Uncle Stout,
doesn't seem to me what life is about.

V

Listen to me, dear Uncle Stout,
I now know the thing that life is about.

It is that mug
on the feminine neck.

It is those bumps
I yearned to stroke.

It is those pins
with the crack between.

It's an oily crack, said Doug with a shout,
and that is the thing that life is about!

Start of page 260 in the book

Liberace

I lived across the road from Liberace.
He carried all my schoolbooks home from school.
He gladly paid that price to have a girl friend:
and I was gladly his deluded fool.

Start of page 261 in the book

Platform 16, Victoria

American youth, U.S. boy!
back you go, from Gatwick.
You saw our London sights thru dreamy eyes:
only the girls burned
the back of your teenage retina.

I watch you, in the electric train,
your slashed lips vibrate.
The kisses they command
should include mine.
I waft them to you.

Your bone and skin,
teenage bone and boyish skin,
take a shape, fill out the air.
When I see it I'm there.
Oh yes! I'm there.

You boy, you bony slender boy
of high scarlet colour!
My love wafts to you too easily
I can't help it, oh no I can't help it.
Vividly, you're lovely.

How much of you is your youth?
Transient, it's transient I know.
But reality registers even transient youths.
Anyway, youths must be transient.
Real I grant you, but necessarily transient.

Where did you pick up that essence?
Who gave you your thin stringy skin?
He knows, whoever that was,
the real from the crap
the joy, the vivid, vivid joy.

Start of page 262 in the book

White Cheek

I see, now you remind me of that boy, that we are hurt
in places that might fit;
close-grasped and effortless we might persuade
some inner creature that we two are one.

You tell me you drew back from touching him:
I would have too,
even though his hard muscles
showed uncomprehending willingness to relax.

What value has his will
unwitting, what consent
can his white cheek-encircled lips
convey to us who know?

He bends that white frame
putting it at mercy, opening
the dirty aperture
a man who died might fill.

Entwined without attraction,
clasped by shared knowledge, nothing more,
he'd whisper in our common ear
the bitter secrets of that intercourse.