A Gay Native Son
—for James Baldwin
____________________
James Baldwin
Post-James Baldwin
Pre-Proust
West Chimes
Post-Proust
_________________
James Baldwin
“Hanging from a tree
while white men watched
and cut his sex from
him with a knife”
—James Baldwin,
“Nobody Knows My Name,”
Partisan Review
Something ironic—
White violence perpetually
Understated in Negro verse
Now the irony—
And violent understatement
Are gone, just silence
The trees, the silence—
The all-personal liquid heat
Designed for violence
Dark Georgia night—
Sensual, languid private
A lynching party
No one will see—
No one will ever know
The knife, the boy, the tree
Only the night knows—
Watching, leering, staring
Night male for desire
Post-James Baldwin
“The darkly dramatic
and the histrionic”
—Colm Tóibín,
“James Baldwin: The Flesh
and the Devil,” Love in a
Dark Time
Somewhere in between—
Reportage and the language of
The Hoodoo Voodoo poet
His own hometown—
DeRidder Louisiana
Just Another Country
Wright stayed in Paris—
Neither Ralph Ellison or
Langston Hughes took part
The Civil Rights Movement—
Involved Zubolton from
The very beginning at LSU
He lacked the guile
And ruthlessness of Baldwin
Writing Giovanni’s Room
But it was inevitable—
That his poetic sensibility
Would connect with events
Many books later—
Networking in New Orleans
The Copasetic Bookstore
Pre-Proust
“How the truth of the
body differs from the
lies of the mind.”
—Colm Tóibín,
“James Baldwin: The Flesh
and the Devil,” Love in a
Dark Time
After he got drafted—
I stayed in Baton Rouge
Living in Tigertown
On the edge of campus—
In an apartment on
West Chimes Street
I kept to myself—
Like other gay poets I
Took nothing for granted
Sexual desire was—
A burning book for me
Each word was too hot
Black civil rights—
Was in full motion but
Gay rights took longer
I ran up against—
Prejudice about white
Men loving black men
Everything in my poems—
Was bathed in the black
Sadness that resulted
West Chimes
“flesh itself
and sexual longing”
—Colm Tóibín,
“James Baldwin: The Flesh
and the Devil,” Love in a
Dark Time
There was no hurry—
Taking forever to graduate
My gay WPA way
The Allen Hall murals—
From the Thirties Depression
Seemed darkly dramatic
The New Deal for—
Poets, painters, playwrights
The destiny of the country
I turned inward—
Knowing that vast amounts
Of poetic energy
Would be drained—
From me with any push
For the gay rights movement
Instead I just gave up—
I wasn’t in love or enamored
By the skanky body politic
Smoking dope and—
Sipping wine on Chimes
Its picturesque magnolia view
Later in 1969—
Stonewall finally happened
It was inevitable I suppose
By the early Seventies—
The SF Lit Renaissance
Had sucked me in tho
Post-Proust
“All art is a kind
of confession, more
or less oblique”
—James Baldwin,
“James Baldwin: The Flesh
and the Devil,” Love in a
Dark Time
One makes decisions—
In funny ways sometimes
Looking back on it now
You make a decision—
Without knowing you’ve made it
The Plague did it for me
Baldwin lost Malcolm X—
Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers
John, Bobby, Fred Hampton
I lost Essex Hemphill—
Robert Mapplethorpe, Marlon
Riggs and many others
Baldwin left America—
Spent his last 20 years in France
Burned out by the Body Politic
I became a Buddhist—
Living in a Bashō shack
A lakeside bungalow
That’s why I write—
This way with these lines
Pseudo-haiku zazen
—for James Baldwin
____________________
James Baldwin
Post-James Baldwin
Pre-Proust
West Chimes
Post-Proust
_________________
James Baldwin
“Hanging from a tree
while white men watched
and cut his sex from
him with a knife”
—James Baldwin,
“Nobody Knows My Name,”
Partisan Review
Something ironic—
White violence perpetually
Understated in Negro verse
Now the irony—
And violent understatement
Are gone, just silence
The trees, the silence—
The all-personal liquid heat
Designed for violence
Dark Georgia night—
Sensual, languid private
A lynching party
No one will see—
No one will ever know
The knife, the boy, the tree
Only the night knows—
Watching, leering, staring
Night male for desire
Post-James Baldwin
“The darkly dramatic
and the histrionic”
—Colm Tóibín,
“James Baldwin: The Flesh
and the Devil,” Love in a
Dark Time
Somewhere in between—
Reportage and the language of
The Hoodoo Voodoo poet
His own hometown—
DeRidder Louisiana
Just Another Country
Wright stayed in Paris—
Neither Ralph Ellison or
Langston Hughes took part
The Civil Rights Movement—
Involved Zubolton from
The very beginning at LSU
He lacked the guile
And ruthlessness of Baldwin
Writing Giovanni’s Room
But it was inevitable—
That his poetic sensibility
Would connect with events
Many books later—
Networking in New Orleans
The Copasetic Bookstore
Pre-Proust
“How the truth of the
body differs from the
lies of the mind.”
—Colm Tóibín,
“James Baldwin: The Flesh
and the Devil,” Love in a
Dark Time
After he got drafted—
I stayed in Baton Rouge
Living in Tigertown
On the edge of campus—
In an apartment on
West Chimes Street
I kept to myself—
Like other gay poets I
Took nothing for granted
Sexual desire was—
A burning book for me
Each word was too hot
Black civil rights—
Was in full motion but
Gay rights took longer
I ran up against—
Prejudice about white
Men loving black men
Everything in my poems—
Was bathed in the black
Sadness that resulted
West Chimes
“flesh itself
and sexual longing”
—Colm Tóibín,
“James Baldwin: The Flesh
and the Devil,” Love in a
Dark Time
There was no hurry—
Taking forever to graduate
My gay WPA way
The Allen Hall murals—
From the Thirties Depression
Seemed darkly dramatic
The New Deal for—
Poets, painters, playwrights
The destiny of the country
I turned inward—
Knowing that vast amounts
Of poetic energy
Would be drained—
From me with any push
For the gay rights movement
Instead I just gave up—
I wasn’t in love or enamored
By the skanky body politic
Smoking dope and—
Sipping wine on Chimes
Its picturesque magnolia view
Later in 1969—
Stonewall finally happened
It was inevitable I suppose
By the early Seventies—
The SF Lit Renaissance
Had sucked me in tho
Post-Proust
“All art is a kind
of confession, more
or less oblique”
—James Baldwin,
“James Baldwin: The Flesh
and the Devil,” Love in a
Dark Time
One makes decisions—
In funny ways sometimes
Looking back on it now
You make a decision—
Without knowing you’ve made it
The Plague did it for me
Baldwin lost Malcolm X—
Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers
John, Bobby, Fred Hampton
I lost Essex Hemphill—
Robert Mapplethorpe, Marlon
Riggs and many others
Baldwin left America—
Spent his last 20 years in France
Burned out by the Body Politic
I became a Buddhist—
Living in a Bashō shack
A lakeside bungalow
That’s why I write—
This way with these lines
Pseudo-haiku zazen
No comments:
Post a Comment