Diskobolos
Two young men,
Steve Anthony
It wasn't
It wasn't the fact that you were wearing
No, it wasn't that the waitress put two
It wasn't even that our umbrellas
It was more a coincidence of past
Kieron Devlin
The Craft of Small Talk
Another argument: over water,
I saw what there was to shape, and shaped it.
Without a false note I walked the word
The sum of wounds and wishes became joy
Alfred Celestine
naked to the waist,
are spinning
a frisbee between them,
their bodies
perfecting
the changing arc.
Facing me, one
is bronzed
and muscular, his torso
firm as Myron's
athlete,
as he draws his arm
back for the
fling
or stretches to catch
the disc.
The sun
shines on their game,
they are
summer.
I am caught
between envy
and desire.
From 'Take Any Train'.
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the poet: please do not download or republish
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soaked plimsolls in a muddy patch, and split
blades of grass were sticking to your turnups,
that made me grin; no, it just wasn't that.
My head had already turned with fever
at your smile; so Cheshire cat-like, giddy
with those allusions to my damp presence,
eliciting from the saturated,
rained-off past, the present tense response that
showers in summer are just what I need.
sugars in my tea, when I distinctly
asked for coffee anyway, that made me
gulp it down. It was the count-to-ten,
instant adrenalin rush, seeing you
follow, when I paused, stalling, just to watch
you, detaching from your group of friends and
me, finding the grass so so interesting,
miles away from the old conversations
we had left behind, to say our hellos.
formed a rainbow canopy, a beam that
pierced through plum clouds and stopped me in my tracks,
which rendered clean the message: at all costs,
we must meet up, no matter when or where.
Some other lesson, barely remembered,
circle of events, careless matching, came
back in the crowd of men crushing in the
marquee, escaping the rain, drinking to
oblivion, with no trace of smile fever.
doubt and present impulse that clinched it all,
counselling restraint; a hell of a bore
against well-aimed lips, targeting romance
at a loveless inner vacuum. We said,
"Hello", and the game was fast in motion.
What next? Not avoiding, not plunging on,
no safe solutions. Let's arrange a day,
and see what happens. Arousal began
already when you asked, "What's your number?"
From 'Take Any Train'.
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the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
over streets, over trees crumbled the day
to far-off thoughts, and all that matters
had been reported, and my voice was clay.
When it felt what my fingers were doing,
it lost in form, but to find bit by bit
what was wrong must leave my voice confusing.
(a mock-up of necessary belief
in myself) down to an empty pier: heard
others like me singing and forgot grief.
for days on end, and love threw me a buoy.
From 'Take Any Train'.
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the poet: please do not download or republish
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To Her Lover
Be coy
And long, sad songs,
Ger Kileen
Reprimand
I do wish you two
As for me,
On those sounds
What a night!
Berta Freistadt
Where Lesbians Come From
It is true that lesbians do not have families;
We emerge, instead, complete from some dark shell,
Glowing into warmth in the sun or a hard north wind,
Jan Sellars
My sweet defenceless
Little foe,
And I will take you to me
For a friend.
Be gentle, subtle,
Be less of
Your own,
And I will
Alter anger, and unbend
My joy,
The fractured wish
To mend.
Let siren-hearts defend!
From 'Whatever you Desire'.
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the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
Would stop it
Or at least restrict yourselves
To less unsocial hours.
The earth moved
Seven times last night
Between nine-thirty
And five
And I have to be up for work.
Also the world
Is in enough chaos
Without you adding to it.
You must not suck
Rivers dry
Nor scream down avalanches
There are others to think oŁ
Wendy and Moira
of Gisburn, Lancs
Paddling at Whitstable
On their first holiday
For years
Will not thank you
If they must chase the waves
For ten miles
Under a scarlet sky
Because you two
Made the moon blush
And miss her turn.
When at two forty-five
Portknockic flipped
And felt the spray
As the ferry docked
At Shanklin I. 0. W.
And fishermen shook
And blamed the small catch
Welling from the deep
Frightening the fish,
My "Politics of Celibacy"
Fell off the shelf
And hit me on the nose.
Before I could
Laugh at the irony
You did it again
And I nearly fell out of bed.
From 'Whatever you Desire'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
we have pretend family relationships.
We do not have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters;
our sons and daughters do not count at all,
having no families within which to rear them.
And our lovers, there's nothing in that
but something mocking truth.
For you know it's true -
that lesbians do not have families, like you.
beds and beds of us (like oysters,
what else would I mean?),
sea-born on stormy nights
with the wind in a certain quarter.
We rise and wriggle, all slippery and secret,
curling and stretching and glad to be alive,
untangling our hair from the wind and salt and seaweed.
We steal clothes from washing-lines,
and once it's daylight, almost pass for human.
we lick the salt from our lips,
for now,
and smile.
We live for a while in the light,
(despite your wish that we were not here),
returning to our beds by moonlight
to nurture and foster the sweet salt shells
that give birth to our lesbian futures -
and there we plot, in our dark sea beds,
the seduction of your daughters.
From 'Whatever you Desire'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
L A N G U A G E O F F I R E
Emptied
After love, emptied, my lover settles
Dinyar Godrej
after a swim
Lick, you said, the salt from my skin;
Bernadette Halpin
Construction
Out on the busy street one morning, dust in the air.
Grey-bearded God stood in his pinstripe suit and
And you became aware of the Divine Presence.
"Here it is", said God -- in his camp male stance with
The glamour of classification. sorting the gems.
We enjoy it. The minor flaws in perfected
Peter Daniels
Around himself, eyes shut, a hand
On his chest. Were it not
For my fidgeting he'd sleep
Immediately. Even now
What thoughts does he lull himself
With, intolerant of the prickle
Of words, my ruffling touch?
And this from him who said,
Kiss me, kiss me, and swam
In my eyes. No matter, that
was the kernel, this the shell,
My lover is becoming man again.
From 'Language of Water,
Language of Fire'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
I want you to. My tongue obeyed and drew
a vein darker than your skin (dark
as sunned sand) and deep:
a track, a line, language below
our last estranging conversation.
Your taste stings in my mouth --
and they seem too far again those long hours --
salt burning my eyes, flowing
in harsh desire against my fingers.
I licked them then and thought of you.
Now I am shaping the cool circle where
your breast weighs like windfall soft fruit
heaviest. Its milk is a sweet flood that bathes
my wounded and recalcitrant tongue.
From 'Language of Water,
Language of Fire'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
a battered red construction helmet. He winked
behind his sunglasses: you failed to notice,
concentrating on a simple tune, balancing a few
basic rules of engineering. But then a fact
entered your eye: a speck of diamond. The path
of his eyebeam refracted through his
dark perspex at a critical angle to hit
your own beam bouncing off the surface.
the knack of irony -- "find it. " You were looking
lost-all-alone in a pair of pretty red
steel-capped shoes. Where was the correct
posture to answer his narcissistic challenge?
It's unheroic to rehearse the jargon, though it's fun
trying on the costumes. No good... No use... Ah, just
right - but the mess this place is in, and only
the laws of physics to cope with it.
blueprints blow up to grand holes in production.
The workday satisfaction is in mending them,
or blowing up the whole thing (demolition
is another subject with its own axioms).
To cultivate the instinct and the glittering eyes,
plan your clothes for work, ensuring health
and safety at all times: but the goal is
to build naked office blocks, in open-toed feet.
From 'Language of Water,
Language of Fire'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
Courier
It's very late; almost twelve.
His particoloured tights, black
He's slipped off his brightstripe longlace shoes,
His lightweight helmet rests on his flat
His bike is upright still.
Ted Burford
On the Metropolitan Line
Sometimes the curve of the track
Then you might see an embrace, a fight,
It is a strange processional -- the cleaning of teeth,
Sue Rose
Planned Decay
'The odds against meeting someone in NY
even further: 'probably best experienced
from blinded tenements, odd wisps of smoke,
And I can offer no consoling childhood
to wish this sight away, having been raised
where Three Mills River's dull copper snake
kicked up a sulphurous dew. My attention
the one who got on at 167 St,
His belt displays a bayonet knife. He smiles ...
Steve Cranfield
Angel Wrestling
Angel threw me naked across his shoulder
then barged in and yelled The landlord
Angel spat wine and water over me
Julia Casterton
Starlet
Six feet under I am flying high,
Or Jean Harlow, who dyed her pubic hair
Me? I went peacefully in my sleep
I can tell you now there's nothing romantic
Tamar Yoseloff
Everything is Possible
I want you to know
Cate Parish
A Courtier Speaks
The funeral pyres weep ashes on his gardens.
Peter Wyles
Shuttle, 9 a.m.
For Yves Lubin She was reading a romance novel
She was wearing a long grey coat
She was reminding me of something
Or was it that beauty is everywhere?
waiting.
Michael Lassell
To the Lighthouse It is a temperate habitat. The community is of a manageable size and there
There are more men than women here and this imbalance may go against
They are a friendly people. Excessively so, some might think. It's as tbough
Their language is eager and fragile and, allowing for certain self-imposed
October 1989
Timothy Gallagher
About The Oscars Press
yellow, magenta, are smeared
to the thighs with traffic-splash.
He's a bluebloused redsashed boy
and very visible.
turned off his two-way radio.
Longlegged, he lies on tubetrain moquette,
awkwardly, because of the arms.
black satchel on his flat blue stomach.
His grimed face is closed with weariness.
Sleepily, he's wheeling home.
Wedged professional and tight
at the carriage's end.
From 'Of Eros and of Dust'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
will bring you rocking past the back yards
of the night shells of houses, seediness
known from daylight, but irrelevant
in the dark, as their light pours out its heart.
silhouetted against the blue cell of a lounge,
or glimpse a table, scattered with supper things
after the pitching in of a family at tea, or set
for the stolid, silent falling to of the lonely.
the washing up, the saying goodnight to the children --
a collection of simple hymns; and beautiful:
the unmarked walk from one lit room to another,
the twice daily drawing of the curtains.
From 'Of Eros and of Dust'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
are extremely great, as great as two fish
meeting in the open sea.' On a northbound train
past Yankee Stadium the odds for diminish
only as a passing cityscape
from the relative comfort of the subway.'
Seating in stalls allows the eye no escape
rusted cans, burnt-out cars, every cliche
of urban deprivation, all except
the intentional: this is planned decay.
interlude, fantasy's attic where you
shift the scene, no Poem of Eight-Years-Old
(Those eyes of mine in 1962 ... )
on West Ham ash: the triangle between Berk's
Chemicals, the northern sewer outfall
and the bomb-site of Memorial Park,
wound over ooze between a black-walled canyon,
aerials fought with precocious dioxides,
stuttering first steps in the dawn
strays to within the carriage, and to feet:
the Reebok-quotient still seems pretty high.
I look up, at the man sat opposite,
a largish parcel balanced on one knee.
He meets my glance. His right hand gently moves
to open his leatherjacket. His eyes freeze.
Burnside Avenue. He's edging to the doorway.
It sighs open. Shut. He weaves south, below.
Through glazed eyes I see him swim away.
From 'Of Eros and of Dust'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
and gallopped round the flat in full view
of the spilling pub across the road.
When I shut myself in the bathroom
Angel picked up the hall entryphone
and said OK, OK, I'll tell her. No problem
thinks you should behave. Angel almost
broke my neck between his legs, rigid
with arched back pleasure. If you hear a click
just carry me to hospital I whispered.
It'll be quadroplegia. I will, said Angel
if they'll put us in the same bed.
rubbed a broken peach down my spine
then swallowed. He kept me in his belly
three days and threw me up at Nineveh,
expecting me to do the business. Which I did,
knowing by then that angels need respect
as well as wrestling. As do whales.
From 'As Girls Could Boast'
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
a saint to artful women.
The tabloids chart my upward rise
beyond the likes of page three girls
and readers' wives. The secret?
Girls, steal a tip from Marlene Dietrich,
who had ten-millimetre pearls
sewn into all her evening dresses
to make her nipples larger than life.
platinum, wore only silver satin,
drove a man to suicide on their wedding night,
and died herself soon after (that's important,
girls, don't outstay your welcome).
Jayne Mansfield went out
with a bang, all along the highway,
took her poodle with her,
now how's that for a grand finale?
aided by gin and valium,
still young enough to have avoided the knife,
or the Greta Garbo recluse routine.
I expect to be an angel now, in some kind
of chiffon number and a halo, get the picture?
But girls, I can see you down there,
dancing around your handbags
and marrying the first asshole who asks.
in the stars, balls of gas and rock
and dust. You can see through everything
if you look hard enough; illusion
is what makes it beautiful.
Develop your mystery, girls, after
innocence, it's all you have left.
Or make something up. Where I am now,
they'll never know the difference.
From 'As Girls Could Boast'
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
that if I really wanted to
I could jump off this Royal Albert Hall
balcony
in the middle of the concert
and swing on a floating fungal acoustic device
bellowing like a gorilla
right into that vasty chasm
blooming over everyone's heads
Every time I come here
I think about doing it,
it sends the thrills
shooting up my legs.
Fortunately
the fear of heights
a desire to avoid social ridicule
and a reluctance to interrupt the music
have prevented me
up to now.
From 'As Girls Could Boast'.
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
From the tower, I watch the fires by the river,
the spirits of plague flocking like birds
wheeling around carrion. He is the King
yet he says nothing, smiles, and says nothing.
He shows no sign that he sees or smells
the smoke, the fear, the fever in his kingdom.
He is half a clown, he is playing a role.
Age is rotting him, but I paint his face,
speak the names when he cannot recall them,
sweep his way clear of the rich-clad courtiers.
Around him these golden ones beg for his favour,
while untouchables drag the dead in the streets
and burn them. He orders more music,
his anthem drowns out the wailing at the gate.
I cannot see past that painted smile,
the faintest grimace when the wind changes.
He has said his pieties so well and often
he has no prayers or tears for the dead.
And I could touch that withered cheek,
scratch at his mask and plead for mercy.
But the dead have no place in his sun-lit garden,
he'll learn no prayers for the likes of them.
From 'Jugular Defences'
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
by the white light of a Marky Mark
ad for Calvin Klein cotton under-
wear in the Times Square subway
station - near the first track of the
crosstown shuttle to Grand Central.
and leaned into Marky with her
left shoulder, the better to see the
pages of her half-finished paperback
while I waited on the chilly train
thinking wet-wool commuter thoughts.
but I couldn't remember what.
How beyond my arms love seemed now?
How elusive youth? Or that I needed
to buy a new jar of Metamucil from
the Duane Reade on my lunch hour?
In her padded houndstooth shoulder
leaning into fat-free fluorescent
Marky the way Yves leans into AIDS:
nonchalantly, giving his weight to it,
turning the pages slowly, curious,
From 'Jugular Defences'
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
is plenty of space in which to blossom. Blossoming, in fact, is the major
pursuit of the population. Not surprisingly, there are no exports and the only
import to speak of is people. Like ourselves. I suppose I'm making it sound
like a shutdown world, but welcome.
your aesthetic sense. Try not to be such sticklers for harmony. These are early
days yet. There's plenty of time for a balance to be achieved, and anyway,
as men go, here is a peaceful crop. They'll make you feel secure. They'll make
you believe you forgot to pack all your pretty nightmares.
they've calculated they have neither the time nor the energy to be otherwise.
It's like a craving to escape into one another.
restrictions, sincere. Though they seem happy enough, there is a sadness in
the atmosphere. I suppose this is the nearest they get to a recognition of all
those other worlds closing in --
From 'Jugular Defences'
© Copyright of this poem remains with
the poet: please do not download or republish
without permission.
Of Eros and of Dust |
As Girls Could Boast |
Jugular Defences
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