GAY FAULKNER:
"ABSALOM QUEER QUENTIN" III
“all boy flesh that walked
and breathed stems from
that one ambiguous eluded
dark fatherhead”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Both of us knew it—
There was no way around it
We both had bad blood.
The mulatto curse—
The gift our mother gave us
Her black heritage.
Reenacting it—
What her own mother had done
Back in Chicago.
The dinge déjà vu—
It ran unconsciously
Deep thru all our veins.
She must have known it—
She had a lawyer back then
Unsealed the court file.
The ledgers told all—
Just like in Go Down, Moses
Saxophone mistress.
“So the old man sent
the nigger for Henry,”
Shreve said. “They
Cannot marry because
He is your brother.”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
She must have known then—
After her idiot dinge
Dwayne son was born.
The kid’s black penis—
The ensuing quick divorce
Karma catching up.
Her running away—
From home back to Chicago
Like her own mother.
Falling in love with—
Young sexy saxophonist
Black as Ace of Spades.
Then Dwayne Jerome—
Her Mandingo dominant
Genes coming out then.
While I came out white—
Her no-good white-trash husband
I was more like him.
“and Henry said ‘You
lie’ like that, that
quick: no space,
no interval, no
nothing between”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
I couldn’t say that—
That my mother was lying
And my father too.
I was much too young—
There was only a couple
Of years between us.
Dwayne Jerome and—
Me his older fag brother
Back when it began.
Then I was eighteen—
And he was sixteen years old
That’s when it happened.
Mother’s dinge karma—
It came back to haunt us all
My brother was black.
He was proud of it—
Bragged about it & showed off
I was so ashamed.
“Shreve stood beside
the table, overcoat
buttoned awry over
the bathrobe he
looked huge and
shapeless like a
disheveled bear”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
My blood ran from quick—
To cool, more subtle than his
My Southerner blood.
Black blood ran thru me—
Just as thick as Dwayne’s did
But I was white trash.
My mulattohood—
Hid there in the closet
Along with the rest.
My Southern gayness—
My queer delta Negritude
It was all skin-deep.
Everybody knew—
My lisp, my mince, my weak wrist
No way I could pass.
No more than Dwayne—
Or cute Charles Bon Sutpen
The day he was born.
“Shreve was nineteen,
a few months younger
than Quentin. He looked
exactly nineteen”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
He was one of those—
People who looked exactly
Like they were nineteen.
But you never knew—
Because they looked too much like
Who they really were.
You never really—
Could know because they might be
Taking advantage.
Too exactly true—
Implicitly telling yourself
They must know it all.
But not with Quentin—
Trying to hug himself warm
Between his own arms.
Their vaporizing breaths—
Breathing not separately
But somehow as Twins.
“Not two of them in a
New England college
Sitting-room but one
In a Mississippi library
Sixty years ago…”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Both Quentin & Shreve—
Thinking how Colonel Sutpen
Just sat there waiting.
Quentin sitting there—
Seeing thru the window-pane
Bon & his sister.
The two young lovers—
Tenderly pacing in the
Garden of Eden.
Jasmine, Spiraea—
Honeysuckle sweet-smelling
Sickening sweet blooms.
Bon rejected son—
Judith acquiesced lover
And bereaved Henry.
Then in the saddle—
Over rutted winter roads
Escape in the dawn.
“There would be no
deep breathing tonight.
Already dark, soon the
Chimes would ring for
Midnight…”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
And so black blood coursed—
Immortal intransient
Riding two horses.
Who cared for honor—
Bon & Henry were above
Slothy unregret.
They were high above—
Fat & easy shame by now
Back to New Orleans.
Henry was so young—
His father full of old grief
Full of cool shrewdness.
Henry loved Charles—
More than anybody else
And Quentin knew why.
“some obscure ancient
affronting & outraging
which the actual living
articulate meat had not
suffered but merely
inherited…”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
It bothered me then—
It bothers me now thinking
About my boy-flesh.
Walking & breathing—
The inarticulate meat
I inherited.
So different than his—
Dwayne Jerome’s black penis
Our dark fatherhood.
His more affronting—
More outrageously obscure
Ambiguous rage.
Totally obsessed—
Immorally wanting it
Penis envy mine.
So profoundly dinge—
Exquisitely mulatto
High yellow brother.
Such fluidity—
So hushed and nakedly his
Colored comeliness.
“the bright heels
of all the lost moments
of fifteen and sixteen”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
That I was older—
And should’ve known much better
But couldn’t help it.
Once I found out what—
He was up to all alone
Tricking with himself.
What he came to know—
What I wanted to know too
How good does it feel?
Ten thick black inches—
Breathing, pleasure & darkness
Strangling it to death.
Protoplasmic cum—
Oozing blind articulate
Charles Bon’s manhood.
Dwayne so ripe then—
Down to the last dick-wiggle
His double-stream slit.
“the actual white glare
of clairvoyance (or second
sight or faith in human
misfortune and folly or
whatever you want to call it”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
The lawyer didn’t—
Believe in vice or virtue
Courage, cowardice.
He left that up to—
Good luck & joy from the gods
The scum of Sodom.
But misfortune came—
To both the high & the slow
Sooner or later.
Then he would collect—
His investments with young Bon,
Whores & gambling debts.
Eulalia would—
Pay as well as Sutpen for
The debts of the past.
The Shadows are Shades—
Not of flesh & blood like us
But what could have been.
“both thinking as one,
the voice which happened
to be speaking the thought
only the thinking become
audible, vocal”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Some critics suggest—
Shreve as unreliable
Faulkner Narrator.
And it’s probably—
True beginning with 237
“And Bon didn’t know…”
Then all the way to—
Page 287 with Faulkner
Pretending he’s Shreve.
50 pages of it—
Bon’s internal monologue
His fatalism.
The old weariness—
The incorrigible cat
Wanting solitude.
But then thrust instead—
Into the arms of young
Clodhopper bastard.
“That young clodhopper
bastard. How shall I get
rid of him? I do mean
clodhopper bastard.”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
A Mississippi—
Marriage of convenience
Eulalia’s lost pride.
How to ditch the kid—
How to get rid of him?
Little Sutpen creep.
All the different—
Ways Eulalia could have
Thought this or that.
The grooming of Bon—
Measuring out the doses
Like voodoo stories.
The moral ledger—
The unforgivable wrongs
Sutpen did to her.
A pipeline of pain—
Jealous rage, trouble, yearning
Mean vindictiveness.
“Every time any character
gets into a book no matter
how minor, he’s actually
telling his biography—that’s
all anyone ever does, he
tells his own biography,
talking about himself, in a
thousand different terms,
but himself.”—William Faulkner,
Faulkner in the University
I put the book down—
The whole Eulalia plot
Had become too much.
I could understand—
Both Shreve’s & Quentin’s story
The way it unfolds.
I liked the way Shreve—
Was telling the Sutpen tale
Quentin helping him.
Or maybe actually—
It was Shreve helping Quentin
To see what happened?
Deep South confessions—
Decadent delta reflections
Verandah stories?
I thought about it—
About young Dwayne Jerome
My Bon kid brother.
“The split is the result of the
self’s inability to handle
ambivalence, in this case,
Quentin’s failure to reconcile
His simultaneous attraction
and repulsion by the incestuous
desire for his sister.”—John
Irwin, Doubling and Incest:
Repetition And Revenge
It was hard for me—
Dwayne’s kid brother hardness
The guilt I felt then.
I couldn’t help it—
Full of fear & self-loathing
Doing what I did.
Doing it again—
Getting him off orally
Sucking the kid off.
Both attracted and—
Repulsed by my gay urges
Wanting to know him.
The look on his face—
Feel him up all the way
And getting him off.
Male incest so just—
Awful & yet obsessively
All I could think of.
“my skull, my brow, sockets,
shape and angle of jaw and
chin and some of my thinking
behind it, and which he could
see in my face in his turn”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Dwayne looked at me—
But then looked away from me
Ashamed of my face.
Older half-brother—
A dirty white boy faggot
Not a cocksucker!!!
And yet I was one—
Much worse than being just gay
I was queer for him!!!
Not just that either—
I was in love with his dick
His dinge 10 inches!!!
I swallowed his cum—
I was greedy for seconds
I was white-trash whore!!!
Dwayne looked away—
He was ashamed of my face
Famished cocksucker!!!
“there—there—at any moment,
second, I shall penetrate by
something of will and intensity
and dreadful need, and strip
away that alien leavening
from it and look not on my
brother’s face…”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
But wasn’t that it—
The not-looking that went with
Bad brotherly love?
The kind of love that—
Had many dirty, dinge names
Like nigger lover?
Henry going down—
On handsome suave Charles Bon
The African Prince?
Soon lounging around—
In a silk puce kimono
Smoking cigarettes.
Quickly forgetting—
His country-bumpkin boorish
Boyish stupid life?
Seduced by Charles—
His sophisticated dinge
Suave older brother?
“my brother’s face whom
I did not know I possessed
And hence never missed,
But my father’s, out of the
shadow of whose absence
my spirit’s posthumeity
has never escaped.”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
It was something that—
Was difficult to realize
To reconcile with.
Being so reversed—
Dwayne as Mandingo Bon
The younger brother.
And I was Henry—
As well as Quentin going
Down on Dalton Ames.
The older gay Cain—
Going down on young Able
Young nude hung Dwayne.
Both of us lost boyz—
Alone there in the Senate
Living together.
He may have been like—
Benjy the Child Idiot
Like when he lost it…
“One part of him said He
has my brow my skull my
jaw my hands and the other
said Wait. Wait.”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
But I couldn’t wait—
I couldn’t help myself or
Stop myself back then.
Dwayne was like me—
But in other manly ways
He was Dinge Other.
He was ten inches—
As thick & flat as my wrist
An Afro-dickgod!!!
Did faggy Henry—
Worship Charles that same way
Going down on him?
Did queer Quentin suck—
Every last fucking thick squirt
Dalton Ames’ big dick?
To say what I say—
About male lust & incest
Does it make you puke?
“In the doubling between Bon
and Henry, Bon plays the role
of shadow—the dark self that
is made to bear the consciously
unacceptable desires repudiated
by the bright half of the mind.”
—John Irwin, Doubling and
Incest: Repetition And Revenge
I did the same thing—
Giving Dwayne’s Negro penis
A life of its own.
The way he lost it—
Going spaz worse than Benjy
It was just awful.
So awfully nice—
No wonder Mapplethorpe got
Hung up with guy.
His fashion model—
“Man in a Polyester Suit”
Big black veiny dick.
That one photograph—
Causing Jesse Helms & the
Whole Right Wing to leer.
To ogle & groan—
To stare in wonder at it
African Prince Prick!!!
Negro King of Cock—
All the rich art galleries
The Soul On Ice shocked!!!
“Mr. Compson speaks of Bon’s
“impenetrable and shadowy
character.” Yes, shadowy: a
myth, a phantom: something
which they engendered and
created whole themselves.”
—John Irwin, Doubling and
Incest: Repetition And Revenge
Dehistoricizing it—
The Afro-American
Young blackmale penis?
Robert Mapplethorpe’s—
Faggy Mandingo project
Forbidden Artform?
Definite failure—
Exploring too much too soon
Knowing no limits.
Tracing Milton Moore—
His genital endowments
Back to Jackson, Tenn.
Twenty-five years old—
A family of thirteen boyz
All of them well-hung.
Flying back down there—
To the ghetto tenement
To cruise his nephews!!!
“this flesh and bone and
spirit which stemmed from
the same source that mine
did, where that which he
bequeathed me sprang in
leery hatred and outrage and
unforgiving & ran in shadow”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
I suppose it was good—
Dwayne Jerome a retard
Black Benjy Compson.
He only got worse—
Living in the dinge moment
Young spaz with 2 legs.
In Modernist drag—
Stream of dinge consciousness
No past, no future.
No wonder Compson—
Had the adolescent fixed
He was chasing girls.
Instinctually—
Like all teenage sex-fiends
The girls screamed & ran.
No wonder Compson—
Sold it to get rid of it
Now just a golf course.
To pay for Quentin’s—
Harvard tuition & his
Charles River death.
“the brother who had put the
spell on the sister, seduced
her to his own vicarious image
which walked and breathe with
Bon’s body…the pure and perfect
incest.”—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Maybe that was it—
The pure & perfect incest
Sucking off Dwayne.
Was I not Judith?—
Thwarted Mandingo lover
Getting second chance?
Hunting down Bon’s son—
Charles Etienne De Saint
Young Valery Bon?
Clytemnestra and—
Me down in the Big Easy
Finding Bon’s Love Child.
Making love to him—
Clytie & me half-sisters
In love with dinge dick?
Cute Dwayne Jerome—
Genealogy of groin
My family tree.
“I would have to
look at every day and
whose every move and
action ad speech would
say to me, I have seen
and touched parts of your
[brother’s] body that you
will never see and touch”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
It drove me crazy—
I made him drop out of school
To make him all mine.
The fag wrestling coach—
The ogling creeps in the gym
The shower-room queens.
Special ed class—
All the gimps & poor cripples
The scum of high school.
So I got him home—
Kept him loaded all day long
Not on Tranq’s either.
Pulled the fuckin’ phone—
Outta the dumb goddamn wall
Got him off real good.
Wanted him to be—
My own Charles Bon brother
Marry me instead.
Not shooting him dead—
There at the plantation gates
Like dumb Henry did.
Instead have Dwayne—
Shoot me fuckin’ dead each night
Suck his dinge brains out.
"ABSALOM QUEER QUENTIN" III
“all boy flesh that walked
and breathed stems from
that one ambiguous eluded
dark fatherhead”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Both of us knew it—
There was no way around it
We both had bad blood.
The mulatto curse—
The gift our mother gave us
Her black heritage.
Reenacting it—
What her own mother had done
Back in Chicago.
The dinge déjà vu—
It ran unconsciously
Deep thru all our veins.
She must have known it—
She had a lawyer back then
Unsealed the court file.
The ledgers told all—
Just like in Go Down, Moses
Saxophone mistress.
“So the old man sent
the nigger for Henry,”
Shreve said. “They
Cannot marry because
He is your brother.”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
She must have known then—
After her idiot dinge
Dwayne son was born.
The kid’s black penis—
The ensuing quick divorce
Karma catching up.
Her running away—
From home back to Chicago
Like her own mother.
Falling in love with—
Young sexy saxophonist
Black as Ace of Spades.
Then Dwayne Jerome—
Her Mandingo dominant
Genes coming out then.
While I came out white—
Her no-good white-trash husband
I was more like him.
“and Henry said ‘You
lie’ like that, that
quick: no space,
no interval, no
nothing between”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
I couldn’t say that—
That my mother was lying
And my father too.
I was much too young—
There was only a couple
Of years between us.
Dwayne Jerome and—
Me his older fag brother
Back when it began.
Then I was eighteen—
And he was sixteen years old
That’s when it happened.
Mother’s dinge karma—
It came back to haunt us all
My brother was black.
He was proud of it—
Bragged about it & showed off
I was so ashamed.
“Shreve stood beside
the table, overcoat
buttoned awry over
the bathrobe he
looked huge and
shapeless like a
disheveled bear”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
My blood ran from quick—
To cool, more subtle than his
My Southerner blood.
Black blood ran thru me—
Just as thick as Dwayne’s did
But I was white trash.
My mulattohood—
Hid there in the closet
Along with the rest.
My Southern gayness—
My queer delta Negritude
It was all skin-deep.
Everybody knew—
My lisp, my mince, my weak wrist
No way I could pass.
No more than Dwayne—
Or cute Charles Bon Sutpen
The day he was born.
“Shreve was nineteen,
a few months younger
than Quentin. He looked
exactly nineteen”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
He was one of those—
People who looked exactly
Like they were nineteen.
But you never knew—
Because they looked too much like
Who they really were.
You never really—
Could know because they might be
Taking advantage.
Too exactly true—
Implicitly telling yourself
They must know it all.
But not with Quentin—
Trying to hug himself warm
Between his own arms.
Their vaporizing breaths—
Breathing not separately
But somehow as Twins.
“Not two of them in a
New England college
Sitting-room but one
In a Mississippi library
Sixty years ago…”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Both Quentin & Shreve—
Thinking how Colonel Sutpen
Just sat there waiting.
Quentin sitting there—
Seeing thru the window-pane
Bon & his sister.
The two young lovers—
Tenderly pacing in the
Garden of Eden.
Jasmine, Spiraea—
Honeysuckle sweet-smelling
Sickening sweet blooms.
Bon rejected son—
Judith acquiesced lover
And bereaved Henry.
Then in the saddle—
Over rutted winter roads
Escape in the dawn.
“There would be no
deep breathing tonight.
Already dark, soon the
Chimes would ring for
Midnight…”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
And so black blood coursed—
Immortal intransient
Riding two horses.
Who cared for honor—
Bon & Henry were above
Slothy unregret.
They were high above—
Fat & easy shame by now
Back to New Orleans.
Henry was so young—
His father full of old grief
Full of cool shrewdness.
Henry loved Charles—
More than anybody else
And Quentin knew why.
“some obscure ancient
affronting & outraging
which the actual living
articulate meat had not
suffered but merely
inherited…”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
It bothered me then—
It bothers me now thinking
About my boy-flesh.
Walking & breathing—
The inarticulate meat
I inherited.
So different than his—
Dwayne Jerome’s black penis
Our dark fatherhood.
His more affronting—
More outrageously obscure
Ambiguous rage.
Totally obsessed—
Immorally wanting it
Penis envy mine.
So profoundly dinge—
Exquisitely mulatto
High yellow brother.
Such fluidity—
So hushed and nakedly his
Colored comeliness.
“the bright heels
of all the lost moments
of fifteen and sixteen”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
That I was older—
And should’ve known much better
But couldn’t help it.
Once I found out what—
He was up to all alone
Tricking with himself.
What he came to know—
What I wanted to know too
How good does it feel?
Ten thick black inches—
Breathing, pleasure & darkness
Strangling it to death.
Protoplasmic cum—
Oozing blind articulate
Charles Bon’s manhood.
Dwayne so ripe then—
Down to the last dick-wiggle
His double-stream slit.
“the actual white glare
of clairvoyance (or second
sight or faith in human
misfortune and folly or
whatever you want to call it”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
The lawyer didn’t—
Believe in vice or virtue
Courage, cowardice.
He left that up to—
Good luck & joy from the gods
The scum of Sodom.
But misfortune came—
To both the high & the slow
Sooner or later.
Then he would collect—
His investments with young Bon,
Whores & gambling debts.
Eulalia would—
Pay as well as Sutpen for
The debts of the past.
The Shadows are Shades—
Not of flesh & blood like us
But what could have been.
“both thinking as one,
the voice which happened
to be speaking the thought
only the thinking become
audible, vocal”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Some critics suggest—
Shreve as unreliable
Faulkner Narrator.
And it’s probably—
True beginning with 237
“And Bon didn’t know…”
Then all the way to—
Page 287 with Faulkner
Pretending he’s Shreve.
50 pages of it—
Bon’s internal monologue
His fatalism.
The old weariness—
The incorrigible cat
Wanting solitude.
But then thrust instead—
Into the arms of young
Clodhopper bastard.
“That young clodhopper
bastard. How shall I get
rid of him? I do mean
clodhopper bastard.”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
A Mississippi—
Marriage of convenience
Eulalia’s lost pride.
How to ditch the kid—
How to get rid of him?
Little Sutpen creep.
All the different—
Ways Eulalia could have
Thought this or that.
The grooming of Bon—
Measuring out the doses
Like voodoo stories.
The moral ledger—
The unforgivable wrongs
Sutpen did to her.
A pipeline of pain—
Jealous rage, trouble, yearning
Mean vindictiveness.
“Every time any character
gets into a book no matter
how minor, he’s actually
telling his biography—that’s
all anyone ever does, he
tells his own biography,
talking about himself, in a
thousand different terms,
but himself.”—William Faulkner,
Faulkner in the University
I put the book down—
The whole Eulalia plot
Had become too much.
I could understand—
Both Shreve’s & Quentin’s story
The way it unfolds.
I liked the way Shreve—
Was telling the Sutpen tale
Quentin helping him.
Or maybe actually—
It was Shreve helping Quentin
To see what happened?
Deep South confessions—
Decadent delta reflections
Verandah stories?
I thought about it—
About young Dwayne Jerome
My Bon kid brother.
“The split is the result of the
self’s inability to handle
ambivalence, in this case,
Quentin’s failure to reconcile
His simultaneous attraction
and repulsion by the incestuous
desire for his sister.”—John
Irwin, Doubling and Incest:
Repetition And Revenge
It was hard for me—
Dwayne’s kid brother hardness
The guilt I felt then.
I couldn’t help it—
Full of fear & self-loathing
Doing what I did.
Doing it again—
Getting him off orally
Sucking the kid off.
Both attracted and—
Repulsed by my gay urges
Wanting to know him.
The look on his face—
Feel him up all the way
And getting him off.
Male incest so just—
Awful & yet obsessively
All I could think of.
“my skull, my brow, sockets,
shape and angle of jaw and
chin and some of my thinking
behind it, and which he could
see in my face in his turn”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Dwayne looked at me—
But then looked away from me
Ashamed of my face.
Older half-brother—
A dirty white boy faggot
Not a cocksucker!!!
And yet I was one—
Much worse than being just gay
I was queer for him!!!
Not just that either—
I was in love with his dick
His dinge 10 inches!!!
I swallowed his cum—
I was greedy for seconds
I was white-trash whore!!!
Dwayne looked away—
He was ashamed of my face
Famished cocksucker!!!
“there—there—at any moment,
second, I shall penetrate by
something of will and intensity
and dreadful need, and strip
away that alien leavening
from it and look not on my
brother’s face…”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
But wasn’t that it—
The not-looking that went with
Bad brotherly love?
The kind of love that—
Had many dirty, dinge names
Like nigger lover?
Henry going down—
On handsome suave Charles Bon
The African Prince?
Soon lounging around—
In a silk puce kimono
Smoking cigarettes.
Quickly forgetting—
His country-bumpkin boorish
Boyish stupid life?
Seduced by Charles—
His sophisticated dinge
Suave older brother?
“my brother’s face whom
I did not know I possessed
And hence never missed,
But my father’s, out of the
shadow of whose absence
my spirit’s posthumeity
has never escaped.”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
It was something that—
Was difficult to realize
To reconcile with.
Being so reversed—
Dwayne as Mandingo Bon
The younger brother.
And I was Henry—
As well as Quentin going
Down on Dalton Ames.
The older gay Cain—
Going down on young Able
Young nude hung Dwayne.
Both of us lost boyz—
Alone there in the Senate
Living together.
He may have been like—
Benjy the Child Idiot
Like when he lost it…
“One part of him said He
has my brow my skull my
jaw my hands and the other
said Wait. Wait.”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
But I couldn’t wait—
I couldn’t help myself or
Stop myself back then.
Dwayne was like me—
But in other manly ways
He was Dinge Other.
He was ten inches—
As thick & flat as my wrist
An Afro-dickgod!!!
Did faggy Henry—
Worship Charles that same way
Going down on him?
Did queer Quentin suck—
Every last fucking thick squirt
Dalton Ames’ big dick?
To say what I say—
About male lust & incest
Does it make you puke?
“In the doubling between Bon
and Henry, Bon plays the role
of shadow—the dark self that
is made to bear the consciously
unacceptable desires repudiated
by the bright half of the mind.”
—John Irwin, Doubling and
Incest: Repetition And Revenge
I did the same thing—
Giving Dwayne’s Negro penis
A life of its own.
The way he lost it—
Going spaz worse than Benjy
It was just awful.
So awfully nice—
No wonder Mapplethorpe got
Hung up with guy.
His fashion model—
“Man in a Polyester Suit”
Big black veiny dick.
That one photograph—
Causing Jesse Helms & the
Whole Right Wing to leer.
To ogle & groan—
To stare in wonder at it
African Prince Prick!!!
Negro King of Cock—
All the rich art galleries
The Soul On Ice shocked!!!
“Mr. Compson speaks of Bon’s
“impenetrable and shadowy
character.” Yes, shadowy: a
myth, a phantom: something
which they engendered and
created whole themselves.”
—John Irwin, Doubling and
Incest: Repetition And Revenge
Dehistoricizing it—
The Afro-American
Young blackmale penis?
Robert Mapplethorpe’s—
Faggy Mandingo project
Forbidden Artform?
Definite failure—
Exploring too much too soon
Knowing no limits.
Tracing Milton Moore—
His genital endowments
Back to Jackson, Tenn.
Twenty-five years old—
A family of thirteen boyz
All of them well-hung.
Flying back down there—
To the ghetto tenement
To cruise his nephews!!!
“this flesh and bone and
spirit which stemmed from
the same source that mine
did, where that which he
bequeathed me sprang in
leery hatred and outrage and
unforgiving & ran in shadow”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
I suppose it was good—
Dwayne Jerome a retard
Black Benjy Compson.
He only got worse—
Living in the dinge moment
Young spaz with 2 legs.
In Modernist drag—
Stream of dinge consciousness
No past, no future.
No wonder Compson—
Had the adolescent fixed
He was chasing girls.
Instinctually—
Like all teenage sex-fiends
The girls screamed & ran.
No wonder Compson—
Sold it to get rid of it
Now just a golf course.
To pay for Quentin’s—
Harvard tuition & his
Charles River death.
“the brother who had put the
spell on the sister, seduced
her to his own vicarious image
which walked and breathe with
Bon’s body…the pure and perfect
incest.”—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
Maybe that was it—
The pure & perfect incest
Sucking off Dwayne.
Was I not Judith?—
Thwarted Mandingo lover
Getting second chance?
Hunting down Bon’s son—
Charles Etienne De Saint
Young Valery Bon?
Clytemnestra and—
Me down in the Big Easy
Finding Bon’s Love Child.
Making love to him—
Clytie & me half-sisters
In love with dinge dick?
Cute Dwayne Jerome—
Genealogy of groin
My family tree.
“I would have to
look at every day and
whose every move and
action ad speech would
say to me, I have seen
and touched parts of your
[brother’s] body that you
will never see and touch”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom
It drove me crazy—
I made him drop out of school
To make him all mine.
The fag wrestling coach—
The ogling creeps in the gym
The shower-room queens.
Special ed class—
All the gimps & poor cripples
The scum of high school.
So I got him home—
Kept him loaded all day long
Not on Tranq’s either.
Pulled the fuckin’ phone—
Outta the dumb goddamn wall
Got him off real good.
Wanted him to be—
My own Charles Bon brother
Marry me instead.
Not shooting him dead—
There at the plantation gates
Like dumb Henry did.
Instead have Dwayne—
Shoot me fuckin’ dead each night
Suck his dinge brains out.
