THE BOY IN THE HIGH CASTLE





The Boy in the High Castle—Chapter Nine
Babel-17


—for Samuel R. Delany

Six at the beginning means:
"Boylike contemplation.”
—Hexagram 20—Kuan
Contemplation (View)

I. Bobby Folsum / Marilyn Hacker

…here is the split of ambiguity—
exquisite cleavage in bed knotting
and unknotting shadowy three-way
Bobby Folsum and me, boys who weren’t
boys anymore, Marilyn a woman no
longer a girl, pelvic arching in bed,
holding each other together, again
and again surging back & forth—
like driftwood tidewater undertow,
Bobby’s narrow hips, wide shoulders,
rough-hewn hands, motion of light
on water, tricking for a living before
safe sex was in, back then in the ‘60s
—from “Prism and the Lens”

II. Ver Dorco

…words on yellowing pages of
an Ace paperback novel are
the only words I’ve known—
my hands reach out to them
even now all these years later
—from “Quartet”

III. Jebel Tarik / Bobby Folsum

…he’s real, grimy, exiled—
he eludes us, we show him
books and bridges, we make
a language in bed we can all
speak, no bland fantasy or
mother-tongue to plague
us, he’s got his own bad
dreams, needs work, get
drunk, maybe wouldn’t
have chosen to be so
incredibly handsome and
beautiful, but he is
—from “The Navigator”

…we sleep together, then
the three of us, a treaty
of silence…
—from “The Song of Liadam”

IV. Three Way

…turning inside out just for us,
dilated eyes, fucking joints akimbo,
he loses it, wired, fucked up good,
gagging on his own tongue, his spine
bending, chest breathing hard, his
sharp chewed fingernails digging
into the mattress, coughs, comes,
the twin behind his eyes all ours,
the dark twin turns inside-out in
bed, swallows his tongue, letting his
uncut penis short-circuit behind his
eyes, letting his spine snap free, feeling
our palms on his ass, charged pearls
oozing, smoothing the sheets with his
foreskin, ribs, tears, tough pectorals,
all his flesh curving away from us,
as we kiss him more, his buttocks
and shoulder-blades grind into us,
we want more of him, brine, gurgling
blood, sperm born, his wet lips
—from “Dark Twin”

V. Markus Truwarba

getting older down in December,
the cycle of years plummeting now,
the crystal reveries of snow storms
coming and going thru white trees,
is it the leaves beneath my feet
that crackle muted in fear or is it
me, I’m trying to remember it all
again, when I ask “Was it Bobby
who freed me—or Marilyn? Or both?
Three-ways were like that, remember?
—from “Elektra”

VI. Bobby

“Young man, we will gnaw your lips,
bite your tongue, steal your hands…”
—Rydra Wong

…we gnawed on his lips, until they
were black & blue, we sucked his
tongue out of its socket, then we got
busy below his waist, until we pulled
him inside-out, Sprong! Spaz! Shiver!
up & down his spine, he lost it good,
his gnawed fingernails deep inside my
ears, past earlobes, into my brain…








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