SMOKE, LILIES AND JADE

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SMOKE, GETTING LAID
AND SPADES
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Niggeratti Manor

I wanted to write—
Something about Harlem
Getting stoned tonight.

We live together—
The Niggeratti Manor—
In a room upstairs.

Bruce has painted our—
Walls with lurid nude frescos
Latino boyfriends.

The Harlem Night

Sitting at the desk—
Listening to jazz playing
In the room next door.

Wallace Thurmond be—
Slow-dancing with a sailor
It’s Saturday night.

The Harlem nightlife—
Is just warming up tonight
Drifting thru window.

Writing Something

I wanted to say—
Something but I forgot what
It was telling me.

It’s like Rimbaud said—
I wasn’t smoking the pipe
It was smoking me.

Whatever that means—
With Leland sitting there in
The darkness tonight.

Leland Petit

Sipping bath-tub gin—
Watching me write for Nugent
Something he might like.

Probably not though—
Bruce is like bitchy Wallace
Not nice like Leland.

It’s like Rimbaud says—
I’m not smoking the hash pipe
It’s smoking me now.

Church Organist

A church organist—
A do-gooder in disguise
Are they all that way?

Wallace cynical—
The best reform for mankind
Getting rid of them.

While Leland Petit—
Harlem Grace Church organist
Plays for their lost souls.

Smoke, Getting Laid
& Spades

Smoke & getting laid—
Blowing blue smoke late at night
With red jade, green walls.

My bloodshot eyes red—
Like pomegranate juice &
Slanted like a cat.

Sitting in a chair—
Writing & pretending to
Be somebody else.

The Negrotarians

“the lost wing
of the younger
generation movement”
—Alain Locke, "Black
Truth and Black Beauty,"
Opportunity Jan. 1933

“His pictures are just—
Smply obscene,” Leland said
To young Jerome Jones.

“You really think so?”—
Jerome said to his new blond
Lover, nude in bed.

“The turn me on, Sam”—
And they were very sexy
Phalluses up there.

Paul Arbian was—
A very talented man
A tres gay Artiste…

The handsome young black—
Adolescent slipped back the
Sheets to let Sam see.

“See?” the erect kid—
said, showing off his body.
Sam Carte got silent.

He passed young Jerome—
The fat joint they’d been smoking
Smiling at the kid.

Jerome was living—
Now in the Niggeratti
Manor with them all.

He inhaled the weed—
Made his dick swell at the tip
Sam went down on him.

Depraved & Degenerate

Everything that Sam—
Didn’t understand he just
Labeled it Depraved.

It was Depraved or—
Degenerate or sometimes
Both at the same time.

Giving a black kid—
Some nice head in the morning
Wasn’t Decadent.

Getting the kid off—
Swallowing it in one gulp
That wasn’t Depraved.

Smelling his armpits—
Giving him a nice rim-job
Degenerate, hmmm?

Certainly now, dear—
Samuel Carte world never
Admit such a thing.

And yet that’s why he—
Was living here in Harlem
Black bohemia.

He’d had enough of—
Genteel Minnesota there
Up there by Canada.

He loved young black meat—
Sam without a doubt was a
Black Organist Queen.

Dinge Queen

Samuel Carte was—
The organist at the
Harlem Grace Church.

The one over there—
On Broadway & was simply
New York City’s best.

His supple fingers—
His little toesies dancing
On the petals neat.

That’s why he was such—
An excellent cocksucker
At Niggeratti.

Jerome Jones found that—
Out when Sam hustled the kid
Back to the Manor.

Jerome liked it there—
He got lots of attention
And encouragement.

He too wanted some—
Neat fame & Harlem fortune
From this Renaissance.

He could feel it deep—
With all these avant-garde queers
They were into it…

Jerome shot his wad—
Letting Sam drain every
Oozing, runny squirt.

Smoke, Lilies and Jade

Jerome liked Nugent—
Bruce Nugent the artist who
Painted the porno.

His nom de plum was—
Miss Paul Arbian Esquire
Both artist & poet.

“Smoke, Lilies and Jade”—
Bruce’s long reefer poem
He especially liked.

It was the first gay—
Long-drawn out erotic verse
Jerome ever read.

About a black man—
And an exquisite sexy
Hispanic young stud.

It turned him on bad—
Just reading it & then when
Bruce read it out loud.

It was different—
Not a bit like the stuffy
Poetry at school.

How did Bruce do it—
A Niggeratti Poem?
Could he write one too?

The reefer helped some—
But there was something else tho
An African muse?

Godawful People

Most of Samuel’s
Friends were social workers
Ex-missionaries.

Many were reformed—
Disillusioned ministers
Social radicals.

Sam knew some poets—
Mostly young versifiers
Ditched by their husbands.

They’d gush all over—
Not like Nuget’s gay poem
That was much too much.

There were a couple—
YMCA well-meaning
Homosexuals.

Mostly white dinge-queens—
Who wanted to schmooze like Sam
With Niggeratti.

What do you expect—
From a Grace Church organist?
They weren’t avant-garde.

So I got loaded—
And sat at a desk writing
What came in my head.

It was just garbage—
I was just 18-years-old
I didn’t know shit.

Home to Harlem

I got sick of it—
Biloxi, Mississippi
It was dead down there.

And I would be too—
Like one way or another
They didn’t like me.

One of the Planters—
Had put the make on me
For his new houseboy.

I never did like—
Yoknapatawpha homo
Sexuality…

Every time I came—
All I could think about
Was them lynching me.

Or castrating me—
Like they did to Joe Xmas
In Light in August.

So I took a bus—
Up to New York City
Harlem my new home.

There’s a house-party—
Tonight & Samuel said
I’d meet some writers.

Just so Bruce Nuget’s—
There that’s all I really want
What’s he like in bed?

The Party

“Mad to gleet you, dear”—
Eustace said, sizing me up
Pinching my tight ass.

“Are you a virgin?”—
Bruce Nugent asked, coyly.
“Don’t blush, you’re so cute.”

“Stop it,” Leland said,
“This frail youth is still virgin.
Well, sorta, kinda.”

“I like your paintings,”
I said to him. “Well, you should,
They’re works of art, kid.”

“Isn’t she just the—
Most disgusting Harlem fag?”
Samuel told me.

“You know, honeybunch—
You’ve got a simply divine
Young chicken friend here.”

I think I blushed but—
Then maybe it was like
Something in my pants.

Nugent was looking—
Down at it, measuring it
Viewing it up close.

“Wanna paint it, Bruce?”—
Popped outta my loose mouth.
The gin was talking.

A Portrait

The next thing I knew—
I was upstairs in the nude
It was so bizarre.

I’d never done coke—
Everything turned caviar
Madly rococo.

Antique etchings and—
Cloisonné bric-a-brac lines
Covered my eyeballs.

Something was growing—
Down there between my legs
Onyx with pink head.

White lilies, red ones—
Jaundiced daffodils, slender
Orchids, pale narcissi.

And simply tons of—
Polychromatic pansies,
Soporific lotus.

My nude body oozed—
Exotic perfume outta
My Mandingo loins.

I felt a hand then—
An insinuating pair
Of lips way down there.

My eyes were closing—
Involuntarily all
On their own tight.