THE SUNKEN GARDEN
1
“I want to be / at least
as alive as the vulgar.”
—Frank O’Hara
There was this nelly—
Cheerleader who was
Simply shameless
Long before camp—
You should have seen
Him do the pom-poms
He had simply no shame—
He was one of the girls
He flaunted Fag Femininity
________________
2
“you were made in the image
of god / I was not / I was made
in the image of a sissy truck-driver”
—Frank O’Hara
I tried to butch it up—
I was biting my fingernails
Deep in the closet
No matter how much—
I tried to act muy macho
I was still a sissy faggot
I admired you so much—
For your flagrant faggotry
You were “out” all the way!
_________________________
3
“so that in the end you seem
to be the only one who knows
what the subject of a poem is”
—James Schuyler
The shame of being gay—
Seems so truly camp since
Everybody knew anyway
I swished, I minced—
I lisped whenever I dared
To open my faggy mouth
Yet you flaunted it—
At the Basket Ball games
Everyone simply loved it!!!
_____________
4
“Oh! Kangaroos, sequins,
chocolate sodas! You
really are beautiful! Pearls,
Harmonicas, jujubes”
—Frank O’Hara
It wasn’t New York City—
I didn’t work at the chic
Museum of Modern Art
I was a soda-jerk—
At the local Peter Pan
Ice Cream joint
I was good at making—
Hot Fudge Sundays and
Jizzy fizzy lovely sodas
I flirted with the local—
Campus jocks and studs
Scooped out free ice cream
Sometimes it worked—
The Kansas City boys
Smirked, but let me
_____________
5
“The stuff they’ve always
talked about / Still makes
a poem a surprise! /These
things are with us every day”
—Frank O’Hara
The little things—
Growing up even like I
Did still in the closet
It was still a surprise—
So much young male
Beauty back in the ‘60s
Peter Pan was just—
A block south of KSTC
I was there waiting
___________________
6
“partly because of the
secrecy our smiles take on
before people and statuary”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
The Sunken Garden—
South of campus next
To gone Norton Hall
Like a scene out of—
SUMMER AND SMOKE
Alma doing Earl Holliman
That’s where I did them—
Guys I hustled for more
Than just a free soda
____________
7
“Even more fun that going
to San Sebastian, Irún,
Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
Why go anywhere else—
Some exotic Mexican or
Polynesian sex hotspot?
When Kansas cock is—
Just as big and succulent
As the dick I got
And honey, I’m glad it’s
The Flyover State ‘cause
It leaves more to me!!!
___________
8
“partly because of the
fluorescent orange tulips
around the birches”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
Especially in the spring—
That’s when I loved to
Give them blow-jobs
The gurgling fountain—
The lovely bushes for my
Trysts with Kansas cock
What more could a meek—
Mere William Allen White
Faggy librarian ask for?
9
“partly because of my love
for you, partly because of
your love for yogurt”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
Hardly, my dear—
It was more like delicious
Hot Fudge Sundays
That was your favorite—
Me skinning back the ripe
Bananas like a foreskin
Then ogling you gobble—
It up knowing that I’d
Get you off after work
10
“it is hard to believe
when I’m with you that
there can be anything
as still as solemn”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
Down there in depths—
Of the Sunken Fountain
Late on Friday nights
The bottled fetuses—
Over there in the display
Cabinets of Norton Hall
Writhing in ecstasy—
As I gulped your cumly
Squirting nasty offspring
11
“just as at home I never
think of the Nude Descending
a Staircase”—Frank O’Hara,
Having a Coke with You
Who needs Duchamp—
When I’ve got you to be
My fickle Freshman lover?
You prefer chicks but—
They all give you the usual
No pussy hanky-panky, guy!
Naturally I commiserate—
Here have a nice Fudge Sunday
Later getting you off succulently
____________
12
“and the fact that you
move so beautifully more
or less takes care of Futurism”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
Who needs a Nude—
Descending a Staircase
When I’ve got you?
I’d take you home—
But you prefer the
Campus Sunken Garden
The way you flex—
Your ass when you cum
Who needs Miss Duchamp?
______________
13
“when they never got the
right person to stand near
the tree when the sun sank”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
I was like Geraldine Page—
I’d won an argument that
I didn’t want to win
Being gay in a Kansas—
college town wasn’t the
easiest thing, my dears
I took a pill for my—
Nelly nerves though
And calmly did him
14
“it seems they were
all cheated of some
marvelous experience”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
So I stayed closeted—
Working there at William
Allen White Library
In those calm Eisenhower—
Years like Elsie Pine my
Mentor wanted me to do
The same with pianist—
Vernon Sheffield who
Gave exquisite recitals
16
“wasted on me
which is why I am
telling you about it”
—Frank O’Hara, Having a
Coke with You
So like a nelly fool—
I stayed, oblivious to
Nothing but my Muse
Wasn’t this where—
I was supposed to
Become Miss Barrie?
Peter Pan Park—
Peter Pan soda jerk
Peter Pan gay poet?
GAY TRANSLATIONESE
THYRSIS
NARCISSUS
CIRCE
AMARYLLIS
________________
THYRSIS
“If he takes the she-goat,
the kid shall be yours.”
—translated by Robert Wells
Theocritus, Idyll 1
_________________
Pan chooses the horny guy—
then he does the she-goat
That leaves the goatherd—
the kid as my prize
Nothing tastes so delicious—
as a cute unmilked kid
______________
NARCISSUS
“What can the water be,
other than itself?”
—Robert Wells
The Pool
_____________
What else can the pool be—
but a mirror for your male beauty?
The thought that’s it’s all there—
gathered together just for you
________________
Each svelte curve of you shoulders—
moist in the hollow of the pool
Your narrow face half-asleep—
douching yourself in the morning
_______________
How I’ve imagined you turning in sleep—
in some dark dream taking hold of you
Now your image bears you down further—
its weight a wish disguised, a knowledge
_______________________
Not to be kept by the living—
what remains is what’s unpossessible
Servitude's counterpart a hidden beauty—
ghosting your gestures, bringing you down
______________
To learn its own existence through you—
your weightless image in the water
A different pose as the water chokes you—
drowning you with its cold vibrancy
_______________
CIRCE
“drugs as strong as
any brewed by Circe”
—translated by Robert Wells
Theocritus, Idyll 2
__________________
Give me some dope, Circe—
something to charm him with
Something to work a spell on him—
to bind him to me as my Lover
_______________
Twelve inches will surely satisfy—
my lonely, throbbing Clitoris!!!
A circlet of fine kinky pubes—
a virile manly macho Mustache
______________
Bless my fine fellatio Lips!!!
so that I can finally know him!!!
May his young Manhood truly be—
Head Swine Odysseus himself!!!
_____________
Leader of his Crass Crew of—
unforgivably Porky Pig Swine!!!
Let them hurt me bad where it counts—
my swollen, bruised, needy Pussy!!!
_____________
Bind them with Moon and Magic—
Cum-bathed Hecatê, my Earthly Double
Going down on the whole wrestling-school—
of Timagetus, all his young muscle-boys
______________
Listen to my song, I'll chant it low—
I’ll even raise Dead Dicks from the Grave!!!
Make my drink as strong as any brewed—
by Circe, Medea or yellow-haired Perimedê…
__________________
AMARYLLIS
“Now I know Love
as he is, an angry god”
—translated by Robert Wells
Theocritus, Idyll 3
_____________________
Like Amaryllis I was bleeding—
bleeding for love, my dears
That’s after I met young Alteo—
and fell for him head over heels
_____________
But Alteo was only interested—
in girls, just girls, dontchaknow
“Only the girl who can bring me—
a new flower will receive my love.”
______________
Naturally, I despaired and turned to—
the Oracle at Delphi for some advice
There I was told to take an arrow—
from the temple & turn it into a poem
______________
And to wound myself writing it—
publishing it and declaring my love
If necessary I should repeat this action—
every subsequent evening I got stoned
______________
I did what the oracle told me to do—
stabbing my breast & heart for the Muse
Suddenly poetry began streaming out of me—
the Gay Muse cumming like a jizz-jet!!!
_______________
What became of my Amaryllis love?—
it became gay translationese at a glance
Like a bee flitting thru a drawn curtain—
out of a cave of dark ivy & maidenhair fern
_____________
O pity my restless heart! Look how I opine!—
now I know Love as he is, an angry god
Making me go down on him all the time—
wooing him & wagging my faggy tongue...
DOOMED DOMA YOUTH
“A bourgeois redeemed must give
up all his rights, to banish from
his soul, once and for all, the idea
of power.”—Pier Paolo Pasolini
___________________
These verses may clash with you—
DOMA (1996-2013) teenage youth who
Grew up during these past two decades
Beneath the sharp heel of Str8ts who
Feared the Institution of Marriage was
Surely doomed by Feral Fags in Heat
Who wanted to get married in Hawaii
And live like everybody else with the
Usual perks and privileges of the
Heterosexual petit bourgeoisie
But I’m sorry my dears this polemic
Against the Supreme’s decision has
Come a little bit too late and now—
Using the rather dated Viet Nam
Collegiate Protest jargon back then:
“You’re just licking ass, my dears”
______________
Now journalists from around the world—
(Including those of television & internet)
Have your number and after making you
Tres fearful, uncertain, desperate
(Benissimo!), all-knowing about str8t
Bullies, blackmailers, sick and shameless—
Now the prerogatives of the petty-bourgeois
Are all yours, my dears, welcome to the
Great Heteronormative Society trained and
So very exquisitely evilly acculturated to the
Subtle middleclass nuances of demonization,
Discrimination, feminization now just waiting
For the next Subhuman class ready to be
Treated like we were, as well as Women,
The Native American Indians, the Blacks,
The Japanese, the Chinese, the Jews
_______________
Who will be the next lucky sub-proletariat—
Lured by Post-Colonial Neo-Capitalistic
Globalization to free themselves from the
Usual dreary poverty, slums, Ghettohood
To the glorious heights of all of us happy
Gay liberated Petit Bourgeois Pricks?
Surely the Chicanos from Mexico are the
Next ones in line for the lovely Postmodern
New Order Version of Whatever’s To Come?
No more friendships with the Third World—
Excluded (an exclusion that has no equal)
Humiliated by the loss of Chicano Culture
Replaced by New Sacred Hooliganism
(Elected tradition of the Risorgimento)
The same old class struggle we went through,
Children of Stonewall and DOMA Dominion.
____________
The New York Times now licks your ass,
As well as FOX-News & the Media Whores,
Just like Corriere della Sera, Newsweek,
Monde and all the Internet Bubble-Heads,
You lick your own ass, you are their children,
Their hope, their future: if you complain have
You prepared for a certain class struggle kind
Of Blowback against you? If anything, it’s
Still a struggle for those, intellectual or dumb,
It’s your fight now, it’s very funny the idea
That the young gay bourgeois will send to jail
The next generation of young bourgeois for
Demanding what the old bourgeois wanted—
The complete subservience of the slovenly
Next bunch of stupid subproletarian slobs
That’s how the young bourgeoisie likes to
_______________________
Punish itself by becoming the old bourgeoisie
All over again, flattering and punishing and
Strangling themselves with their own
Middle-age middle-class Jack the Ripper
Murderer’s strong hands around the throat
Continuing their hooliganism conformist schlep
Ah!!! Continuous Intergenerational Warfare!!!
FOR PASOLINI
“Vecchio ragazzo di Casarsa,
dear protagonist / Where shall we
find the like of your intelligence?”
—Robert Wells, For Pasolini
_____________
The queens coming here—
summer cruises to Mama Roma
looking for young cute Ragazzi
Their money & boredom—
are enough to keep things going
for the petit bourgeoisie for now
Wealthy aging windowed divas—
like Janet Leigh buy their happiness:
THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE
___________
Your sub-proletarian hustlers now—
tres jaded my poor dearest Pasolini
your Roma a ratty rubble of greed
Even the holy path to the Vatican—
trodden with brambles that cover up
tracks of priestly pedophile pleasures
Packed down to make a rough & narrow—
Highway to Sodom and Gomorrah where
veins on Bernini’s Columns obscenely writhe
ANCIENT YOUTH
“What strikes me is the
realization of how ingenuous
was the expansiveness with
which I wrote them: it was as
if I were writing for someone who
could only love me a great deal”
—Pier Paolo Pasolini
_____________
“Ah, antichissima gioventù”—
Ah, ancient youth is the central
exclamation of my poetry
My tireless street-cruising was—
dominated by a feeling of sexual promise
and distraction, but more than that
There were many glimpses of the—
always feeling nearer the enchantment
of something more ancient than Rome
___________
I felt an ancient unrest deep inside me—
within the language of my novels & poetry
that often gave me the impression that
I was already moving beyond what—
I was saying & my words were being
thrown away like it had happened before
Casually and with impatience all my—
confusions recorded in my poetry had
already resolved themselves long ago
GIUSEPPE PELOSI
“As in a film by Godard”
—Pier Paolo Pasolini
A Desperate Vitality
__________
As in a film by Pasolini—
alone in my Alpha-Romero
driving slowly late at night
Cruising for a hot hustler—
he doesn’t have to be cute
elegiac or divinely celestial
Just slitting my veins again—
looking for trouble as usual
a Neapolitan trick for love
_____________
As in a film by Pasolini—
neocapitalist cynicism and
romanticism behind the wheel
Young pouty Giuseppe Pelosi—
17-years-old, handsome and
sullen, just the right trick
As we drive to Ostia—
a nice secluded beach for
a quick succulent blowjob
ANNA MAGNANI
“Between hope and my old
distrust, I approach you”
—Pier Paolo Pasolini, The
Ashes of Gramsci
____________
Between the ancient walls—
there in the dark dirty alleys
I got by as a pretty prostitute
When I grew middle-aged and—
dumpy I quit being a trashy
old whore and quit the racket
_____________
I saved up my money for a—
fruit and vegetable stand there
in busy downtown Roma
I could afford a nice apartment—
and I felt guilty about leaving
my son Ettore back in the sticks
_____________
For him, I had big dreams of—
success and a good job, so I
even bought him a motorcycle
I got him out of the country—
and into the big city so that
he could making a living
__________
But it was too late for Ettore—
he hated school and working even
though I got him a job as a waiter
He fell in love with a gang of young—
do-nothing, no-good teenage thugs
all they did was steal & play cards
_____________
Ettore sold all my classic records—
I used to be quite a famous singer
at weddings, funerals and cafes
Ettore was my pride and joy—
the son of a young handsome pimp
that got be started as a whore
_____________
But my past haunted me and—
when Ettore found out the truth
he died a tragic death in prison
down through the centuries—
it’s always been the same story
grief breeds in the backstreets
TRES GAY MENU
______________
Today’s Tasty Soup Du Jour Menu
The Semen
The Rope
The U-District Kid
Mama Mozambique
The Raft of the Medusa
Queer Theory Queen Bees
Fabulous Fuck-Ups
Vatican Bad Vibes
Prison Planet
Seattle Self-Loathing
___________________________
The Semen
“The cocks of street trash
shoot their panoramic
mess across my face!!!”
—Jean Senac, Myth of
Mediterranean Semen
_______________________
I don't react anymore —
instead in barely a whisper
I plant the kiss of malediction
on your body's twenty-six wounds
Come read me, my dears! —
I’m a coward and fag castrated
effeminized male and malleable
female, come read my beads!!!
How hot the stench of cum —
Let your delirious orgasm proclaim
your progeny swarming up like a
decorative A-bomb cloud with flair!
Your street trash cock shoots—
its panoramic mess across my face
come see, my dears, my whole goddamn
life smeared and runny with regret!
_____________
The Rope
God in his balls has —
Adam, Eve, Cain and Able lying in wait
and the Chicken Angel named as His
Provocateur has come from the stars
The Fallen One and his Assembly —
burning in the villas, the housing projects
of the gods, are anxiously waiting for
communion with his seminal cumming
Angels floating above the surface —
bursts of laughter! — creaming with semen.
jacking off, heavenly creamy cum oozing,
dripping down from the heavens above
The heart of a young sea urchin!!! —
come Miss Ginsberg, come, let's braid your
beard with a rope of slippery-shocking cum
turning those cocksuckers green with envy
_____________________
The U-District Kid
He’s strong, despicably beautiful! —
he has no soul, only streams of pukey pus
beneath his angelic skin of faded jaded
jealous jizzy sickening semen Sunlight!
He speaks of love and of love again —
he doesn’t understand anything but the
pain and pleasure of cumming mirrored
back in your face as you get drained
He speaks of pubic hair, the chests of
street hustlers, uncivilized tricks, not
understanding anything but pricks that
run on empty down to the last drop
Enormous adolescent motorcycles —
leaving skid marks across their thighs
vast continents rising up from under
his lair of Pasolini SALO screams
Mama Mozambique
He doesn't understand anything but —
the tears when flying saucers stammer
the names: Tyrone! Dwayne! Jerome!
I’ve sucked you off as deep as Africa
Now the sand slowly dribbles down —
through the hour glass, on cue he begins
to flow, that oceanic look on his face
what slave planet owns your big cock?
The fire is invisible, moving you know —
according to the Pasolini’s ashes, I don't
understand anything but the agony of
spoiled baby-boomer boomerang-cocks
Bottomless pain shot straight to the Bone —
unwinding like a mummy, golden streams
of pretty pouty piss-pissoir litanies from
the Void that is nothing but a Hole
_______________________
The Raft of the Medusa
The Raft of the Medusa, Venus and Ares —
bitching like a pair of faggoty fairies trying
to maneuver a place in the lovely Louvre!?
mating of sky and sea, Twins and Unicorns
Love with a Grecian god in the ruins —
love with a Tahitian stud in back of the bus
a cute Parisian prick in Greenwich Village
the endless empty wheeze of cumming
Slavery, surrender of man and his gender —
cock and balls, the illegible scrawl of magical
graffiti spells on filthy bathroom walls as
the she-male angel hovers to watch it all
He pisses down my mouth, then kisses—
me goodbye while further south, far away,
between the break of day and the horizon,
wails the Virgin Mary his mother
______________
Queer Theory Queen Bees
Venom-full, hateful, completely-de reguer—
the depilated & repudiated old faggots that
call themselves astute cuntivore-cuntrified
Cynical Queer Theory Queen Bees
What are they whining about now that—
The Supremes have ditched tacky DOMA
and all the gay Californians are flocking to
City Hall to finally be able to get married?
No longer having to be treated as unequal—
Creeps undeserving of the heteronormative
Perks and privileges of being Citizens not
Subhuman jerkoffs fit for the gutter?
Surely, my dears, the Queer Theorists—
will come up with something more than
devilishly inventive to guilt our joy at
succumbing to the louche lure of love?
Fabulous Fuck-Ups
Kids weren't born to throw stones at—
Young fags in high school or junior high
Schools across America where families send
Their kids to learn how to read and write
Or shoot them dead in E. O Green Oxnard—
Junior High School like they did to that kid
15-year-old Larry King typing that morning
doing his English assignment for class
Just because he wore mauve eye-shadow—
or swished & minced down the hallways
with his high-heeled boots and happy gay
Lady Gaga performance art attitude
Or insult future gay kids by stuffing their—
heads with putrid thoughts, transforming
them into stinking str8t Mormon Boy Scouts
or wild packs of snarling suburban killers
_______________
Vatican Bad Vibes
God, if you exist, what the hell—
are you up to? Man is strung upside down,
chameleonized on your tree of castration
hanging nude for everyone to see
See how Man settles into his stench—
and ruin with his cybernetic technology,
his internet, his drones, his thingamajigs,
his tacky transhumanist thingamabobs
See how he nibbles at his neighbor's brain—
methodically transforming his so-so existence
into his Auschwitzes, his Dresdens, his Hiroshimas,
his various bankster-fraudster pimp scams
There are no keyholes left, to be crammed with—
leering voyeuristic eyeballs trying to see us as
we strain to take a dump and wipe our happy little
Porky Pig assholes plugged with the usual shit
___________________
Prison Planet
No radical way to stand up against this—
New World Order 1984 Brazil Dystopia push
toward the usual Prison Planet scenario that’s
happening now to this Pussy Planet
So appallingly pussy that we’ve all become—
Radioactive Radiant Queens, receptacles of
fundamental negations, despising ourselves,
even against those who are against it!
There’s no way of denying it, my dears—
other than to be sumptuously decadent
singing our Weimar cabaret swansongs like
Marlene Dietrich with “Falling in Love Again.”
Except that we’ve become our own demise—
a truly procreative coitus with ourselves, the
driving force of our own tacky demise and
perpetual loathing! Our contra-queenery!
Seattle Self-Loathing
As Marlene sings: “I can’t help it!!!”—
Here I am down in the stinky pukey shitty
Berlin Bunker of my various hardly virginal
torrid vaginaries I was born with
Make me do something easy, I said—
to my all-knowing UFO handlers who take
care of all that usual business of the old
Karma Las Vegas Rebirth crap game
Make me drink up the sea, make me—
swill endless martinis as I play the fickle
Roulette Wheel of Fortune down here on
the meat hooks of my latest Diva Dive
Make me forget all the memories that—
I tire off, Christ, I’m so tired of lives
that cover-up and deny my shame as
I transmigrate through all my bodies
