TYRONE

____________________________

Tyrone
—for Essex Hemphill

I give you flashes—
Of my gay boyhood lover
My dinge kid brother.

Our ruptured bloodlines—
Seized by dinge brotherly love
Down there on my knees.

Drawing blood fighting—
Would be a lot easier
Then just making love.

Your violent cum—
Sure didn’t come outta you
The easy way, man.



My bruised homo lips—
All black & blue just for you
And your bedroom eyes.

How come it hurt bad—
Intimate black brotherhood
Letting me have some?

You didn’t want them—
To know I was queer for you
My hung cute brother?

But who didn’t know—
Everybody knew it
Dingeville USA.



It wasn’t boyhood—
It wasn’t manhood either
It was prime dinge meat.

You knew I craved it—
But you did the sixty-nine
Down-low on yourself.

How selfish you were—
Not wanting to share a drop
Of your runny spluge.

Not until you whored me—
Playing pimp with your big dick
Made me pay for it.



But what the fuck man—
I gladly pawned mother’s jewels
To buy your dinge love.

Mother’s bridge parties—
Lifting money outta the
Drunk ladies’ purses.

Even got a job—
As a soda-jerk uptown
To jerk you off nice.

My cute blood brother—
How many sons & daughters
Got sucked outta you?

Never easy tho—
You tried to hold it back some
Despising my lips.

You didn’t want to—
But you were broke & needed
Money for your weed.

Playing big shot then—
Sixteen years old & haughty
Denigrating me.

Nothing could be as—
Shameful as a cocksucking
Older gay brother.



Guilting me real bad—
With each Voodoo Hoodoo wad
Outta Africa.

Mandingo manhood—
Down to the last dick-wiggle
Smirking as you groaned.

Treating me like shit—
Dirty trailer trash white boy
Doing the down-low.

The Dick of My Father
—for Etheridge Knight

There are no big dicks—
In my proud family tree
Only skulls with grins.

My dinge father’s skull—
Big as the Mississippi
Moon over Memphis.

My dinge father’s dick—
There in the bottom of the
Tallahatchie mud.

My mother a whore—
In Miss Reba’s dark House of
Skanky ill repute.

My father got lynched—
Because he was a young black
Stud back from the war.

His name Joe Christmas—
They strung him up like a nice
Xmas tree in a barn.

Whatever they cut—
Was as much a part of me
As it was of him.

It feels like a knife—
And a lynching down there
Between my two legs.

I get paranoid—
Making love to my girlfriend
I cum always scared.

My father’s skull grins—
Beneath the Tallahatchie
Somewhere down there deep.

For Black Gay Poets

Who Think White
—for Etheridge Knight

Black gay poets aren’t—
Like white boyz who think pussy
All the time is great.

Black gay poets don’t—
Give a royal goddamn for things
That white boyz want bad.

Black gay poets can’t—
Write about black gay desire
Without naming it.

Black gay poets won’t—
Get down like Mapplethorpe did
And praise black twelve inches.

Black gay poets shrug—
At white boyz as warriors
Dying with trumpets.

Black gay poets shake—
Their heads at nelly black queens
Hiding in church choirs.

Black gay poets don’t—
Belong to the Black People
And the Movement now.

Black gay poets are—
Voodoo Hoodoo walking dead
In the Zombie Night.

The Idea of Ancestry
—for Etheridge Knight

I got all of them—
Deep in here inside my guts
Coiled inside my nuts.

My testicles ache—
With dinge ancestor worship
Dinge, black, high yellow.

My girlfriend left me—
So when I spluge I get blue
With progeny guilt.

I had a boyfriend—
Who liked to bottom for me
I kinda liked him.

When I was sixteen—
The gay Baptist minister
Got down on his knees.

I baptized his face—
With spluge douchebag disrespect
Take this Jesus-freak.

I get real nervous—
In the club when guyz want me
Black meat cannibals.

A Poem of Attrition
—for Etheridge Knight

It’s all bloody red—
On the inside he likes to
Point out afterwards.

My dinge kid brother—
Lighter-skinned than me except
For his black ten inches.

That’s because he had—
A different father who
Who was albino.

Better looking like—
His pretty redhead mother
Than I’d ever be.

He could be white boy—
Except for his Mandingo dick
Talk of the gym class.

Me I’m butt-ugly—
Like my used-car salesman dad
Gimpy sad-sack fuck.

Both of them dead now—
Even tho their blood slithers
Thru my useless veins.

I feel better tho—
After some incestuous
Miscegenation.

Getting young Tyrone—
Tasting what could’ve been me
His jizzy nutsac.

I’ve got this problem—
It’s called black penis envy
I wanna be him.

He knows I want it—
I’ve watched Tyrone grow pubes
Since the 7th grade.

Getting his nut off—
Is serious business
Our Family Tree.

Knowing each jizz-wad—
Is where he’s cuming from
And where it’s going.

Sounds kinda dirty—
But it gets down & dirty
Swallowing it slow.