DES GAY IMAGISTES 

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THE POOL
A LOVER
AUTUMN
NUIT BLANCHE
A MEAN MEME
A WRITER
POUND AND ELIOT
IN A GARDEN
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THE POOL

 “Cold, wet leaves”
—Amy Lowell, The Pond
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Floating belly-up in the pool—
while croaking old frog me
ogles at you in the twilight

A LOVER

“I could see to
write you a letter”
—Amy Lowell, A Lover
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If I could catch a green—
lantern full of a hundred
flitting glowing fireflies

I could sit down tonight—
and write a charmingly
haunting haiku for you

AUTUMN

“the purple vine leaves”
—Amy Lowell, Autumn

All day I’ve watched his purple veins
there in the water, bulging in the
sunlight, fringed with pubes

NUIT BLANCHE

“I have no wish for
doing any thing”
—Amy Lowell
Nuit Blanche
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I’m really not very horny tonight—
i don’t feel like doing much anything
tricks don’t do the trick arousing me
they don’t fit my mood I guess

Not even humming violin strings—
can coax me with calm cadences
not even the most handsome marquise
can pluck me from my strange silence
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Here in the dark I hear their feet—
dilly-dallying there in the gravel
a red moon leers down through the
drunken sycamores with a sigh

A lurching boy, nimble as a clown—
runs his fingers down his stomach
cuddling his burning wiry pubes
kiss me, his red lips say tonight

A MEAN MEME

“What torture lurks 
within a single thought”  
—Amy Lowell, Fixed Idea
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Thinking can grow too constant—
my weary mind gets bored and aches
it becomes a rather tiring habit

Dull forgetfulness sometimes better—
than unceasingly remembering things
old delights can get painfully refined
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Sometimes it’s better to just relax—
and enjoy that old delight in just
not thinking about anything at all

Giving one’s broken heart a brief rest—
forgetting about constantly struggling
not thinking so much about love

A WRITER

“Why do you hide yourself?”
—Amy Lowell, The Artist
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Why do you hide yourself in words—
why do you dim yourself with pulp fiction
I can buy books in any bookstore

I’d rather enjoy your silence—
the evenings when your pale body
can be so startling and quiet
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The way you curve upward—
shooting a jet of quivering cum
the way you waver and tremble

I would rather tremble too—
knowing you, feeling you shoot
your beauty untainted by words

POUND AND ELIOT

“The chatter of little people”
—Amy Lowell, Aliens   
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The chatter of little people—
like Ezra Pound & Miss Eliot
burdens my Sapphic Muse

Their tiresome misogyny—
such Patriarchal Pricks
creepy Closet Cases
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They’re like water-drops—
slowly wearing the rocks
of Gay Modernism away

But Sapphic Modernism—
Lesbos Imagism will perhaps
give us Sylvia Plath again

IN A GARDEN

“Gushing from the mouths”
—Amy Lowell, In a Garden
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Gushing from the mouths—
of granite-lipped stone cherubs
down into overflowing basins

The running waters rushing—
the passing wind whispering
in the close-clipped lawn
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Turning the garden into Eden—
spreading out under the sky
glutted with dabbling daffodils

Damp smell the delicate ferns—
tunnels of stone, full of the trickle
and plash of marble fountains
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Splashing down on moss-tarnished—
old steps, then falling, throbbing,
gurgling, leaping and running

The deep, cool murmur of the—
night with you nude in the shining
silver-flickering swimming pool
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The scent of the lilacs heavy at night—
you in your whiteness bathing and
letting me see how much you’ve grown