Elderly Fags in the Castro

THE CASTRO

The greatest expectation—

I suppose is that surely things

Will get better & better

After all, my dears—

DADT, DOMA & ENDA were

Successfully adjudicated 

And yet in The Castro—

The very Heart of our

Gay Push for Equality

The real estate creeps—

Are pushing out the Fags

For Silicon Valley Straights

Our Elderly SF citizens—

There in the Castro District

Usurped insidiously now

Harvey Milk would’ve—

Been driven out of business

Does the Castro have pride?

Faulkner and Polk

FAULKNER AND POLK

“There is a blank spot

right in the middle of

where my memory

ought to be”—Noel Polk

OUTSIDE THE SOUTHERN MYTH 

Polk and Picayune—

They’re like anti-memoirs

For me back in the South

I’m not a character—

In these pages and yet

I’m writing about it

Noel Polk & Faulkner—

As well as living down

There in the Deep South

They’re both dead now—

All I have left is memories

Reading them at LSU

There in Allen Hall—

ABSALOM, ABSALOM 

Me as queer Quentin

Faulkner knew me—

 Polk too way back then

In the Viet Nam Sixties

Yoknapatawpha yanked—

Me outta the gay Closet

Deep South Lit saved me

Uranian Vagabondage

URANIAN VAGABONDAGE 

“His Eminency says that you

may publish these naïve and

almost Dantesque and

sometimes quite Homeresque

fragments” —Frederick William Rolfe

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

I suppose my dears—

There’s nothing quite worse

Than Uranian vagabondage

Being a Born-Again Fag—

The object of gay derision

By the Queenly Pantheon

Feasting with Panthers—

Precociously Pater-esque 

In this Wildean wilderness

Like Baron Corfu’s—

Weirding of the Wanderer

Daring debutante once again

LETTER FROM VENICE

“Let it be known that I

was called in an age yet

to come Nicholas Crabbe

the Impossible”—Frederick 

William Rolfe, THE WEIRD 

OF THE WANDERER

How else to deal—

With the Slings and Arrows

Outrageous Fortune dishes out

Tableau vivants—

Venice delectations

Aschenbach’s laments

Boss Cupid Venice—

Androgynous Theater

Fag Film Noir Flick

Miss Auden says—

“Naughty, naughty

What would Mother say?”

REINCARNATION RAKE

“For I penetrated into 

the occult arcana”

—Frederick William Rolfe

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

Was it Sebastian Melmoth—

Or perhaps Sebastian Nabokov

Who gave me some advice?

The Vassar novelist—

Had read CHICKEN (1979)

Back in graduate school

“The Last Uranian”—

He signed his lovely novel

Now in my tall bookshelves

I do feel rather somewhat—

Ancient being a Uranian again

A Reincarnated Rake

ASCHENBACH-ESQUE

“to commune with

long-dead sages”

—Frederick William Rolfe

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

What’s worse, my dear—

Being a born-again Uranian

Or one for the first time?

Surely DEATH IN VENICE—

Is only one way to go there

Languishing in a beach-chair

Or pretending to be a Borgia—

Or a new Vatican Pope like

Miss Baron Corfu pretended?

I simply can’t really decide—

A closeted Aschenbach, a Borgia

Or perhaps a new Vatican Pope?

QUEER QUAGMIRES

“enduring unmentioned

and unthought-of anguish”

—Frederick William Rolfe

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

Doodles and ditherings—

Fin de siècle fantasies

Tres rococo-esque, my dear

And yet what else—

Can I possibly do now

Daring descent and decline?

Lavish literary genres—

Decaying like human beings

English especially susceptible 

Why just the other day—

Detoured by some dithering delirious 

Diphthongs into a queer quagmire!!!

Pizza Slut

PIZZA DELIVERY BOY

“The sky was uniformly grey”

—Alan Hollingshurst,

THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY

The sky was dreary-deary dinge—

So tres tragically depressingly

Without any sign of sunshine—

Breaking thru the cloudy frippery 

The sun had migrated south—

Surely to never return again

What I needed was a quickie—

A delicious douche of the divine

Rather than dawdle away the—

Tawdry gnarly overcast day

So I did what I usually do—

I phoned for some Thai takeout

Something sweet and sour—

And then if that wasn’t enough

I’d call the delivery boy—

The Pizza Slut Kid for relief

Pope Hadrian VII

POPE HADRIAN VII

“the usual loungers 

and pleasure seekers”

—Frederick Rolfe, 

Baron Corvo, Pope Hadrian VII

I was hardly disappointed, my dears—

After Pope Benedict XVI abdicated

And the Vatican didn’t choose me—

To be St. Peter’s new Vivacious Vicar 

But it’s not I who had lost the Vatican—

It’s the Vatican who had lost me, my dear

So when the Cardinals slank up to me—

I civilly shooed them from my gondola 

I raised my drawbridge and told them—

I was beyond parleys from the heights

Never anymore would I seek them out—

Those stuttering little Chrysostom priests

With their Mad Hatter insane tiaras—

Right out of ALICE IN WONDERLAND

I had my own Temple of the Holy Ghost—

My muscular young Venice gondolier

I’d rescued Zildo from an earthquake—

After that we sailed the Adriatic Sea

The Desire and Pursuit

THE DESIRE AND PURSUIT OF THE HOLE: A ROMANCE OF MODERN VENICE 

“Truth is tarter than taradiddles;

and nothing is tarter, terser, than 

truth on the track of tired trash 

in a trance.”—Frederick Rolfe, 

Baron Corvo, The Desire and 

Pursuit of the Whole: A Romance 

of Modern Venice 

I brushed aside the accumulation of—

Cigarette-ash from my smoking jacket

Picking up a copy of the NYTimes—

Reading once again the news from Rome

The NYTimes is a kind of subterfuge for—

Readers excluded from a view of the facts

It said much but signified nothing—

Hoodwinking, indulging in imagination

Reading between the lines one can sense—

A tale of unparalleled ghastliness opening

“How exquisitely horrible it is,” I said—

Something mysterious was happening

The Creepazoids were taking over—

Cretinism and idiocy on the upswing

Mobs of lower class child idiots were—

Swamping and infesting the schools

People were manifesting defective things—

Like some abortion of the mind, lower IQ’s

These lower classes of idiots were like—

Altogether beneath the animal world

They possessed not taste, smell, hearing—

Sight or touch, they were human imbeciles

Their degenerated brains couldn’t fathom—

The simplest syntax or pleasing dictions

Simple words like “cagotism,” “latebrose”—

“dedecorous,” “physidoyls,” “vexilla,” “amoenely” 

“Succursale” and the verb “ostends”—

Were simply beyond their feeble child idiocy 

Actually though some of my best friends—

Are child idiot gondoliers down here in Venice

I prefer them that way, my dear, for obvious—

And tell-tale reasons I shan’t get into now

Other than to say that my favorite gondolier—

Drinks only wine and plies a mean oar

Not that I’m a whore about rough trade—

But it’s such a refreshing change when

Compared with my miserable egotistical—

Tres gay muse consumed with ambition

Hadrian-esque pubic curls so entrancing—

His back, loins and shoulders so strong…

Miss Hadrian the Divine

MISS HADRIAN THE DIVINE

I was tres tired, simply worn out—

After years and years of trashy

Hope deferred, loneliness and the

Awful pain of unrewarded gay toil

I took everything as nothing more—

Than a personal miserable affront

I was no stranger to mental fatigue—

But corporeal anguish was simply

Much too much for my delicate ego—

The horror of all the world’s creepazoids

I tried to write but dazed by a tacky—

Torrent of ideas I’d find myself dizzy

Meandering in a maze of words to—

The point of sheer utter exhaustion

I’d lose the thread of an argument—

My pen remaining immobile for hours

Sitting here in my low armchair with—

Its shabby brocade, dull-mauve & green

My capacity for writing lovely poetry—

Is being constricted by the times

Old legitimate monarchies are rather—

Everywhere declining & so am I, my dear

Hadrian the Seventh

KISS THE RING

“His sense of beauty

was a great deal

more than acute”

—Frederick Rolfe

HADRIAN THE SEVENTH

As dainty a sight as I ever did see—

In a drifting boat my young gondolier

On the fetid waters of ancient Venice—

So slender, debonair, not shy at all

He knows me already much too well—

I’m just another Aschenbach to him

Deep green water as green can be—

His green eyes, his white ivory teeth

His thin waist bare and tanned—

I have to get him while I can

A string of runny ruthless pearls—

I marvel at his wondrous skin

Lithe rugged legs & lagoons—

Shuddering blushing boss cupid

A setting sun & golden glare—

Dare I do him again one more time?

A Prick for the Knowing Ones

A PRICK FOR THE KNOWING ONES—

(OR PLAIN TRUTHS IN DRAG)

“I am the first in the East,

the first in the West, and

the greatest philosopher

in the Western World”

—“Lord” Timothy Dexter

________

https://jacket2.org/commentary/outsider-poems-mini-anthology-progress-48-%E2%80%9Clord%E2%80%9D-timothy-dexter-%E2%80%9C-pickle-knowing-ones-or-

______________

To queens at Large the time is—

Com at Last the grat day of Regoising

What is that whye I will tell you—

thous three kings is Rased my dears

Rased you meane shoued—

know Rased on the first Royel Arch

In the worid olmost—

not quite but very hiw up upon

Thay are good mark to be scene—

so the womans Lik to see the frount

And all peopel Loves to see them—

as the quakers will Com and peape slyly

And say houe the doue frind—

Father Jorge washeton is the senter

King Addoms at the Rite hand—

the prssent king at the Left hand

Father gorge with his hat on—

the other hats of the middel king

With his sword king Addoms—

with his Cane in a grand poster

Adtetoude turning his fass to wards—

the first king as if thay was on

Sum politicks king our present king—

he is stands hearng being yonger and

Very deafe in short being one—

grat felosfer Looks well East & west

And North & south deafe & very deafe—

the god of Nater has dun very much

For our present king and all our—

former ones thay are all good

I want them to Live for Ever—

and I beleave thay will

It is hard work to be A king—

I say it is harder than tilling the ground

I know it is for I find it is hard work—

to be A Lord I dont desier the sound

But to pleas the peopel at Large—

let it gou to brak the way it dus for

A sort ment to help a good Lafe tp—

cour the sick spleney goutey dull frames

Lik my selfe with the goute and so on—

make merry a Chealy Christon

No matter what thay worshep—

son monne or stars or there wife

Or miss if onnest Live for Ever—

money wont gitt thous figers so fast

as I wish I have senc to Leg horn—

for many mr bourr is one Amonks

many others I sent in the grand—

Crecham thous 3 kings Are plane

white Leead colow at present—

the Royal Arch & figers cost 39 pounds

silver the hiest Councaton order—

in the world so it is sade by knowing ones

I have only 4 Lions & 1 Lam—

up the spread Eagel has bin up 3 years

upon the Coupalay I have 13 billors front—

in strat Row for 13 states when we begun

Round the hous Nater has formed—

the ground Eaquel to a Solomun

the onerbel Jonathan Jackson—

one of the first in this Country

for tast borne a grat man by Nater—

then the best of Lurning what sot me

fored for my plan having so gran spot—

the hool of the word Cant Excead this to

thous that dont know would think—

I was Like halfe the world a Lier

I have traveled good deale but old—

steady men sayeth it is the first that it is

the first best in this Contry—

& others Contrey I tell you this the trouth

None of you all great men needent be

A frunted at my preseadens

I spare Now Cost in the work I have—

the tempel of Reason in my garding

3 years past with a toume—

under it on the Eage of the grass

see it cost 98 gineys besids the Coffen—

panted whit in side & out side

touched with green Nobel trimmings—

uncommon Lock so I can tak

the kee in side and have fier works—

in the toume pipes & tobacker

A speaking trumpet and a bibel—

to read & sum good songs

My Last Wilde Boy Salon

My Last Wilde Boy Salon

“Brad would

rather be dead”

—Richard Howard

“My Last Hustler”

trappings 

_________________

There they all are—

lounging and lying naked

or rather lying in wait for

whatever I’m going to read

them, some on coke or pills, 

others with eyes without flashes 

of lust or blushing, shameless desire,

only a boredom, a tender tribute

to neither Wilde nor eroticism

These are serious customers—

I say to myself perusing the mob,

suspicion creasing their faces,

obviously once all those Botux lips

were naturally puffy with boyfriend

wonder and compliant fleshy joys,

but now far beyond blowjobs,

these young Wildean poets already

have the look of Sebastian Melmoth 

I’d blow them sympathetic kisses—

but what does a old queen like me

have to offer these young boyish 

poets that already seem more jaded

than me, their modern day bateau ivre

journeys much more arduous than mine,

this salon reception room standing room

only crowd I’m reading to & discussing

Dorian Gray if only she were here

Interviewing the Wilde Boys

Interviewing the Wilde Boys

“You’re a cute one.”

—Christopher Hennessy

“The Interview as Cruising Ground”

QLBTQ Point of View November 1, 2013

http://www.glbtq.com/sfeatures/hennessypov.html 

“I invited the cute gay poets right away,” 

Mr. Dimitrov said. “I sort of had a list of 

gays that I wanted to come, and some 

of them that I wanted to sleep with.”

—Alex Dimitrov “The Wilde Boys Salon

for Poetry or Maybe a Hot Date” 

New York Times Fashion & Style 

November 2, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/fashion/rhyme-or-reason-alex-dimitrovs-wilde-boys-salon-for-poetry-or-maybe-a-hot-date.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

_______________

“It was simply exhausting, my dears”—

Miss Dimitrov confesses later on after

Interviewing a dozen tres cute poets—

All of them quite anxious to please

Oral interviews can be quite the quite—

A way to taste future poetry to come

New Wilde boys so cute and cuddly—

All the older queens so tres jealous

Interview as Artform

INTERVIEW AS ARTFORM

“How does poetry 

between gay men 

serve as a kind 

of cruising ground 

in some respects, 

as a space to learn 

about the nature 

of (gay) desire?”

—Christopher Hennessy

"The Interview as Cruising Ground"

QLBTQ Point of View 

November 1, 2013

http://www.glbtq.com/sfeatures/hennessypov.html 

____________________

Yes, the interview as artform. As with Hennessy—a gay ‘cruising ground’ artform. He’s good at it—plus he’s tres talented at critiquing his own performance at it as well. As with this latest GLBTQ interview with himself—a unique form of book review I must say.

My interviews with gays are much more along the lines of fag fictional characters out of my imagination. For example, here’s a rather popular piece I posted recently: “Interview with James Whale.” 

http://www.snarke.com/2013/10/interview-with-james-whale.html 

My style of interviewing is somewhat less cruisy that Hennessy’s charming interviews. Especially when it comes to various Hollywood horror directors…

Such as campy Ed Wood Jr. interviewing Miss James Whale in a rather tres gay conversation there beside Miss Whale’s lovely Pacific Palisades pool. 

It’s a rather jaundiced interview—somewhat interrupted by Miss Whale’s languishing laments about his Hollywood horror film oeuvre.

Nicely interrupted though, now and then, by cute cavorting nude CA boytoys playing there in the lovely blue pool.