The Reluctant Peter

THE RELUCTANT PETER
_______________

Peter
Kensington Gardens
Fairies
After Dark
What Daphne Saw
Fatal Touch
________________

Peter

“He didn’t care for
the suggestion that
he was Peter Pan”
—Piers Dudgeon
Neverland: J. M. Barrie,
The Du Mauriers and the
Dark Side of Peter Pan
________________

I despised Barrie—
The Queen Bee of
Kensington Gardens

Even though she—
Preferred Michael
Thank goodness!

It’s easy to see why—
Michael being the
Best-looking one

Barrie wanted—
Michael to be his
Statue in the Park

So all the Queens—
And Fairies would be
Green with jealousy

Kensington Gardens

“name-dropping and 
scandal-seeking heavy 
breathing”—Janet Maslin,
“For Starters, a Satanic Svengali,”
The NYTimes, Oct 25, 2009
_______________

Barrie took pictures—
Of Michael dressed
In Peter Pan drag 

A cruisy number—
Cute chicken hustler
Just Barrie’s type

Like all those—
Rowdy Gallery Boys
Who booed his Plays

But the sculptor—
Sir George Frampton
Choose another model

Much more innocent—
Miss Frampton worried
About a gay Scandale 

Fairies

“Fairies were
all the rage”
—Piers Dudgeon
Neverland: J. M. Barrie,
The Du Mauriers and the
Dark Side of Peter Pan
____________

Barrie was so—
Tres envious of
“Bluebell in Fairyland”

A trashy popular hit—
Playing the Vaudeville
300 performances!!!

It’s all us boys—
Talked about even
After “Peter Pan”

Miss Barrie was—
Simply chartreuse
With awful jealousy 

She couldn’t stand—
Being upstaged by
Another Playwright!!!

After Dark

“remarkably adept at using 
saccharine passages to 
disguise salacious ones”
“name-dropping and 
scandal-seeking heavy 
breathing”—Janet Maslin,
“For Starters, a Satanic Svengali,”
The NYTimes, Oct 25, 2009
________________

Needless to say—
The Serpentine simply
Just wasn’t ready

What went on there—
In Kensington Garden
After Closing Time

Miss Barrie cruised—
The Park like all the
Other fags of London

Miss Auden got her—
Famous anal fissure
There in the bushes

“The Wound” wasn’t—
pretty but Auden turned
it into a poem anyway

What Daphne Saw

“incongruous, absurd, the head 
with the uniformed cap was not 
a woman's head at all. The thing 
bearing down on her was a cow...
a cow on a woman's body”
—Daphne Maurier, 
“The Blue Lenses
___________________

Barrie wrote—
Sickeningly about
Young boyish beauty

Using saccharine—
Passages to disguise
Salacious passages

She was definitely—
A chicken queen but
With a vulture’s head

Daphne du Maurier—
Describes Barrie nicely
In “The Blue Lenses”

Barrie’s brother David—
Dead in a skating accident
Would be the first victim 

Fatal Touch

 “J. M Barrie has a fatal 
touch for those he loves”
—D. H. Lawrence  

Peter Pan tells—
Miss Barrie in the Play
“Please don’t touch me”

And one can see why—
With everybody dropping
Like flies around her

David Barrie dead—
His mother’s favorite
In a skating accident

Falling thru the ice—
But it’s all hushed up
Only Miss Barrie knows

Daphne Maurier saw—
The truth with her
Svengali Family intuition

The Davies boys—
All dead except Nico too 
From war and suicide