Pegging Straight Boys

STRAIGHT BOY PEGGING 

Just say NO to Pegging!—

Keep butt-fucking QUEER!

That’s what us Queens say!!!

Who cares if straight boys—

Love stuff stuck up their butts

By their slutty girlfriends!!!

Homonormativity—

Simply bores me to tears, my dears

A dildo up their ass???

The QT Queen Bees—

Surely have to criticize such

Tacky Queer Assimilation!!!

Sanctuary

SANCTUARY

“Don’t show me,”

Popeye said. 

“Tell me.”

—William Faulkner

SANCTUARY

I’m telling myself—

Like I told myself back then

“Trust your Intuition”

Edward Albee says—

The same thing in his

Memoir “Stretching It”

His STRETCHING MY MIND—

Creative writing can’t be

Taught, it comes naturally

Like Martha says in—

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF

“What a fucking dump!!!”

Intuition cuts thru all that—

Like a hot knife thru butter

It shows you the way

Huey P. Long Pool

HUEY P. LONG POOL

Now a run-down ruin—

Like an old Southern mansion

But divoon back then

Back in the Sixties—

The Dixie Decadence was

Very addictive

Summer school was like—

Being a rich Guest at the Spa

Lollygagging there

By the swimming pool—

Cruising guys in the showers

Or reading Faulkner

What better way to—

Avoid Quentin at Harvard

His sad suicide…

Dixie Decadence

DIXIE DECADENCE

There at LSU—

Southern Decadence centered

In the Quadrangle

The new Middleton—

Library with my book there

Ensconced in the stacks

Between Miss Ginsberg—

And Mademoiselle Miss Proust

SF Gay Sunshine Press

After Wildman died—

He willed all of his books to

Middleton Library

“Chicken” (1979)—

was my own little toe-hold

in Dixie Decadence

Some Southern Writers

SOME SOUTHERN WRITERS

WALKER PERCY

There amidst all the—

Twisted & gnarled old oak trees

I haunted The Quad

The Library and—

Allen Hall with its moody

English Department

Walker Percy whose—

The Moviegoer simply

Charmed me to no end

But his office hours—

Were dominated by his

Father’s suicide

JOHN HAZARD WILDMAN

We discussed Faulkner—

How tragic his writer’s life

In Mississippi

He was very much—

Like Noel Polk a Faulkner

Scholar and writer

Both imbued in me—

Deep South ambiguity

When it came to love

The whole campus there—

In Baton Rouge seemed very

Dixie decadent

NOEL POLK

Another writer—

From Mississippi thinking

Like Faulkner would think

I knew a kid once—

From Pascagoula like Polk

Fell in love with him

Maybe it was just—

The way he spoke his wordage

Thick as cane syrup

I had him read me—

Faulkner in bed in the dorm

After we made love

Noel Polk

NOEL POLK

“The whole Brownlee 

episode appears set 

aside in a parenthesis, 

as though merely a 

subsidiary clause”

—Noel Polk, “ Reading the 

ledgers,” The Mississippi 

Quarterly 07-01-2002

Dear Noel, I completed my GDM postings on Percival Brownlee: “The Percival Brownlee Ledgers,” “Percival Brownlee Redux” and “Interview with Percival Brownlee.” Thanks to your Mississippi Quarterly seminal essay, I was able to see how all the other Faulkner critics (except you) avoided the Brownlee ledger episode in GDM like the plague, a sexual literary taboo. Miscegenal & incestuous sexuality was just too much for them. 

Like Isaac many critics suppress the Brownlee issue—which to me is the key to GDM text. It’s true that what Faulkner leaves out is often more important than what he actually puts in. A subtle modernist technique—to let the Reader play with the text & imagine as much as he or she can. So much lit crit avoiding the obvious which to me as a gay poet is as simple as reading the Ledger entries. 

Sorry to bother you, but it’s been on my mind since reading your Mississippi Quarterly essay. I see similarities to TSATF. Absalom, Absalom, As I Lay Dying and the Snopes cycle. The gay subtext is deeper than most people think; deeper than the Tallahatchie or Mississippi. I felt it at LSU down by the levee. And Allen Hall with Wildman. The undertow in me & the Deep South… Dennis

Quentin as Closet Case

Young William Faulkner

Quentin as Closet-Case

____________________________________

“Shreve might not be

in Quentin’s pants, but

he’s surely in his head,

a far more terrifying

place for him to be.”

—Noel Polk, “How Shreve

Gets in to Quentin’s Pants,”

Faulkner and Welty and

The Southern Literary Talent

Poor Quentin

Dalton Ames knows it—

And so does Shreve McCannon

They know Quentin’s queer.

They know him better—

More than Quentin knows himself

Mississippi queen.

All of Harvard knows—

Quentin be a closet case

Yes, Quentin be gay.

Quentin falls in love—

With young butch Shreve Mccannon

Same with Dalton Ames.

Jealous of Caddy—

He goes down on Dalton Ames

On the bridge back then.

He’s seen them make love—

Caddy toes pointing straight up

Dalton’s toes straight down.

Even Benjy knows—

Quentin be a real slut now

Just like Caddy is…

On the Bridge

Quentin closet case—

Tries so hard not to be queer

But he can’t help it.

Dalton is all male—

Quentin and Caddy want him

They have the same lips.

Ames lets him have it—

Calls him “Caddy” when he cums

Quentin swoons away.

The Modernist way—

Long streams of consciousness

Dream-like, disjointed.

Alluding to sex—

Homoerotic love play

All in italics…

He isn’t thinking—

Quentin as a source of sex

It was Caddy’s lips.

He looks thru Quentin—

Like thru a piece of stained glass

Why meddle with names?

June Second 1910

“I was I am not”—

Mississippi or Harvard

I’m dead bones down here.

I jump off the bridge—

It’s not the Tallahatchie

It’s Charles River.

Where the boyz are nude—

Skinny-dipping having fun

They invite Quentin.

So easy to be—

“Blind immortal boy” again

In person this time.

I fucked it up tho—

Confused by little sister

My secret urges.

Beating of hot blood—

Young handsome well-hung Dalton

Going all the way.

Making me swallow it—

Dalton’s untethered huge hog

Down Hades abyss.

The River

I could smell the curves—

the river beyond the dusk

last light supine down.

The tranquil tideflats—

Beyond lights the clear pale sky

Dalton’s trembling dick.

Refuge in his pubes—

Conflict temporarily

Silenced by cuming.

Sudden sharp tart taste—

Salty as tears his snotty

Brothel between his legs.

Deep I Memphis trance—

Naked in Miss Reba’s place

Dalton subdues me.

Cuming into my—

Oh Jesus Christ he’s so hot!!!

No wonder I’m queer!!!

The aching rain—

Between silences inside me

Dalton flowing deep.

Shreve at Harvard

I can still taste him—

Invisible blood flowing

My cute young Greek vase.

Past my hot lean lips—

Staining my swan-throat with his

Young thick Moses Rod.

The long warm fingers—

Leaving me breathing hard there

The whispering dorm.

I need Shreve bad—

Like I needed Dalton Ames

Love those Harvard squirts.

Shuddering so hard—

Shreve thinks I’m gonna die

I’ve tried many times.

Somewhere I heard it—

Mississippi drumming down

In my beating heart.

Monologues

Like Jason I keep—

Retuning to the scene of

Incestuous crime.

Going down on Ames—

Dalton’s girlfriends know the truth

Legs around his neck.

The Rod of Aaron—

The seed of young Abraham

Jacob’s cute angel.

My long monologue—

Hovers like moths before flames

And then retreating.

It’s colloquial—

Roots in spoken dialects

Oral intercourse.

When I lose control—

Sex, syntax, all of language

Goes out the window.

Faulkner keeps it up—

Typing away late at night

Rowan Oaks whiskey…

Trying Not to Say

“Faulkner though achieves

the effect f cinematic

montage…juxtaposition

significant episodes…

intimately intertwined”

—Noel Polk,

Children of the Dark House

Benjy tries to say—

But cant while his brothers try

Not to say what’s there.

Jason keeps talking—

He can’t help himself talking

He over-controls…

Quentin is desperate—

He shapes his syntax, grammar

Toward closetry.

Both Dalton Ames and—

Shreve McCannon his husband

Penultimate pricks.

Humiliation—

Imagined conversations

Talking with father.

Episodes control—

Ironic self-reflexive

Gay witty wordplay.

Mélange of denial—

Negatives, mordant syntax

Saddest boy of all…

Spoade

Every closet-case—

Has a Spoade lurking in there

Only too ready…

Squealing the secret—

Shreve be Quentin’s young husband

He loves to bottom.

It’s a train of thought—

Going back to Jefferson

Queer Quentin the fag.

His conversations—

Discomforted by closet

Homoerotics…

Shreve shrugs it all off—

So what if he’s not fucking

Cute sluts like we do?

Spoade a terrapin—

In a street full of Harvard

Dead desperate leaves.

Quentin unravels—

Séances with Dalton Ames

Dangerous bridges.

Benjy’s bleak golf course—

Full of lost golf balls eve

Benjy’s testicles.

Quentin desperate—

Not wanting to put in words

Unmentionables…

Henry Sutpen

Seancing the past—

Channeling the Sutpen voice

Letting it speak now.

Quentin & Henry—

Easily becoming what

Déjà vu can do.

Coached & abetted—

By shreve’s constant questioning

Dialog begins…

Sutpen’s design seems—

To overwhelm narrative

Queering Bon as dinge.

But Henry goes down—

In the Old Miss dorm at night

Surely knows Bon’s dinge?

Why not let Judith—

Get to know Mandingo love

And breed more young Bon’s?

Quentin like Henry—

Young Deep South closet case

Sees into the Past.

Harvard

Quentin hates Harvard—

His Deep South dinge queenery

Doesn’t come off good.

Back to Jefferson—

Jason scowling in the wings

Benjy castrated.

Caddy got married—

Her husband queer for Quentin

His Compson goodlooks.

What was there to go—

Back to in Mississippi?

Homophobia?

His father’s death and—

Mother’s crying all the time

Jason ditching it all.

Harvard taught you how—

To jump off a bridge into

A river’s cool death.

No wonder Quentin—

Simply jumped off the bridge

He hated the South…

Behind the Candelabra

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA 

Yes, Miss Liberace. Quite the Queen Bee. I've seen the movie several times. What's marvelous and amazing is that a movie like this is possible now after all these years. Closetry is bad enough wherever you are, especially back then. Professional closetry even more difficult it seems, but then Liberace covered it all up with his flamboyance and Las Vegas act. It was just all show-biz, dontchaknow. Even so, was the price worth it? Liberace, Rock Hudson and all those thousands of SF & NYC young gays dead of aids. Jimmy Stevens one of them. 

It's lucky I was married to Frank all those years and didn't do the bar or dance club scene. The booze and drugs. It's a wonder the gay movement even survived. Of course, there was Act Up and now retro-virus medicines. The obits in the Bay Area Reporter in SF back in the 80's and 90's went for pages. Now it's down to one or two. Most young gays don't even know about or care about that era that some of us went though anymore.

The Liberace movie is excellent because it's an actual 'uncloseted' documentary melodrama of the way things really were. The struggles of an artist and pianist to be true to his art, even if he is gay, and still perform his dream. Even though they've closed the Vegas Liberace Museum and all the blue-rinse ladies that flocked to his shows are all dead now...

My imagination is like that. I know the FFA boys back in the Midwest were all mostly ugly and had bad teeth. But I try to publish a midwest-noir blog world of fantasy, romance and beauty like Liberace did. It's the only way I can keep from having nightmares about that little Shit-hole of a Kansas Cow-Town down by the tracks. They did to the Hispanics & Somali at Iowa Beef what Bloxom did to Rodriquez  there in that hellish corner room of the EHS tomb. They're still doing it, nothing really changes back there, does it?

It's amazing to me, Connie, that we even survived back then. Some didn't, they succumbed by stoically getting married and just simply living & dying there. I read the Gazette obits and feel sorry for all those lost lives who stayed there, lived there, had kids there, paid taxes there, then just died there. It's the same with my grandparents, my mother & her second husband from Olpe. Somehow trying to compensate for their despair and unhappiness, they slaved all week. Then smoke and drank themselves to death at the VFW nightclub every Saturday night. 

I fled from such futility like you did into Jane Eyre and literature. That's why I'm fond, I suppose, of that 9th grade Gazette photo of you, me, Roberta and Jan Tholen. It's like I felt Elsie Pine, Louis Jaquith and Marjorie Sullivan sensed that fleeing despair in me and gave me that award. Why? What did they sense in me? A poet who didn't know it, ha ha???  

It was just a young gay confused fag who hadn't found the trick of being a Miss Liberace yet.

Jane Eyre

JANE EYRE

Speaking of Madwomen up there—

Moldering away in the closety Attic

I’ve always been fond of Jane Eyre

Of course there was that other—

Emily Bronte classic with Cathy &

Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights

Starring brooding Miss Oliver—

And withering Merle Oberon as

The doomed Yorkshire lovers

But Joan Fontaine doesn’t have—

A chance as the noble governess

In this bleak Gothic soap opera

Orson Welles as melancholy—

Morose Mr. Rochester hogs up the

Silver Screen as usually my dears

Wuthering Sleights

WUTHERING SLEIGHTS

________________________

Young Heathcliff

Hareton Earnshaw

Finisterre

Wuthering Slights

Moors Crossing

Spending the Night

Mytholmroyd Romance

Stormy Weather

Haunted Heathcliff 

Young Giant

The Moors

The Boar

Heptonstall

________________

Young Heathcliff

“He is a dark-skinned

gipsy in aspect”

—Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights

Stephen Jones my landlord—

Was much younger than I thought

I was immediately attracted—

By his sullen bleak eyes

Gazing darkly suspiciously from—

His moody brows as he rode up

A perfect misanthrope like me—

Desolate as the Plains can be

Flint Hills so tres engulfing—

A vast sea surrounding us all about

The Bay of the Dead all around—

Me as Our Lady of the Shipwrecked

The cliff’s edged bare bones—

Admonitory Druid monoliths leering

Here and there on the stony hulk—

Tall grasses begrudgingly bent below

____________________

Hareton Earnshaw

“crumbling griffins and

shameless little boys”

—Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights

The power of the North Wind—

Gave Wuthering Sleights its name

The wind was blowing all the time—

Slanting thru some stunted firs

Gaunt thorn bushes clawing—

Clinging to the forbidden mansion

The windows were narrow—

Deeply set in the brooding walls

Jutting stones defended the corners—

The door a massive thick slab of oak

It was more like a wrecked ship—

All it needed was sharp whitecap waves

_______________________

Finisterre

“this was land’s end”

—Sylvia Path

“Finnisterre”

This was land’s end surely—

A cliff overlooking a black sea

All around the boulder tonnage—

Knuckled, rheumatic, gnarled

It was a gloomy dump—

Left over from an old, messy time

But the rock-pile didn’t budge—

It hid its grudges discontentedly

How did this young Southern Belle—

End up here in this ruined estate?

The doom-dreary wrecked past—

Tomb of dead resurrected souls

I’d married the young landlord—

I lived in his Hall of the Undead

___________________

Wuthering Slights

“rooks croak above 

the appalling ruins”

—Sylvia Plath

“Conversation Among

the Ruins”

Through the grim portico—

Of the grim elegant mansion

Ruins, black shadows—

Creeping thru a castle

Bankrupt estate—

Forgotten winter landscapes

A single Cyclops-eye—

Staring down from the moon

A brooding Dixie girl—

Alone in such a bleak place

________________

Moors Crossing

“storm-struck deck”

—Sylvia Plath

“Channel Crossing

Each window shuddered—

The shock of the wind

Cleaving the house—

Waves, a stubborn hull

The stone ship—

Moving standing still

Rock-haven harbored—

Straining high above

Quirky sullen smirk—

Its mock-heroic pose

Studying me to see—

How long I’d last here

_________________

Spending the Night

“chalk cliffs blanched”

—Sylvia Plath

“Channel Crossing”

Too stormy to leave—

Cloaked in Kansas awe

Sitting by the fire—

Rackety flux outside

Blasts of icy wind—

Freezing onslaught storm

Sipping wine quietly—

Listening in frightened awe

Why would anybody—

Prefer such stark violence?

Bleak stark estate—

Ransacked and forsaken

Keeping such strange—

Unsaid secrets here

My husband Heathcliff—

Smiles as I walk the plank

___________________

Mytholmroyd Romance

“tottering banners”

—Sylvia Plath

“The Snowman on the Moor”

Struggling nonchalance—

Wrestling with angels

How was I to know—

My young husband grieved

He sized me up gravely—

A peacock-feathered fop

Not used to Kansas gloom—

Nor sullen, moody prairies

Stuck here my whole life—

Ending up in my room

Fitfully sleeping thru nights—

Branches rattling the window

Attracted and yet repelled—

Are all Cattlemen this way?

__________________

Stormy Weather

“She shied sideways”

—Sylvia Plath

“The Snowman on the Moor”

Stalemated by the plains—

“Come find Me” she taunted

Who was she in my dream?—

Stuck on the grim windowsill

Standing, haunting me—

Gaunt, winter-beheaded daisies

Stephen Jones warned me—

Without much polite goodwill

Not to pay attention to her—

Just a ghost of the dark night

The wind-harrowed night—

The weltering wind agreed

She had access to the plains—

Heathcliff nursing his rage

_________________________

Haunted Heathcliff

“subdue an unruly man”

—Sylvia Plath

“The Snowman on the Moor”

A fire-blurting, volcano-hot—

Fork-tongued demon man

Above marble snow-heap plains—

Stone-hatcheted so very proud

Iron thighs, grisly-thewed—

Cowboy spur and knot

Moody face, smirky look—

Cynical, smoking his cigar

Dangling spike-studded belt—

Rich rancher and banker

Owned most of Strong City—

As well as The Flint Hills

Meanwhile the blizzard—

Turned into nightlong tryst

I tried to shy away sideways—

But it was already too late
_________________

The Plains

“a white fizz!”

—Sylvia Plath

“The Snowman on the Moor”

Throughout the dark night—

I withstood the dour assaults

The now-flowing wind—

His hard rough Texas lips

His root firmly-fixed deep—

His crudeness, his cruelty 

Each time another ruin—

His obscene Rod of Aaron mine

Cast down Pharaoh’s staircase—

It was like some cattle-drive

Remembering the magnolias—

Of lowland Alabama days

My Southern Belle maiden youth—

My shrewd secret landlord man
________________

The Boar 

“grisly-bristled”

—Sylvia Plath

“Sow”

Gawd how he was endowed—

With a Giant Heathcliff Hog

Impounded from public stare—

Prize of the porky pig show

My bedroom lantern-lit shock—

Coming thru the sunken sty door

I gaped and gasped—

No delicate blue china lips

Glorified prime male flesh—

Mire-smirched, blowzy

Groping me his Snout-cruise—

His vast Brobdingnag boner

His slutty ogling eyes agog—

Prodigious haughty Hoghood 

Stomaching no constraint—

Proceeding to swill and slops

Stephen Jones and I—

Happy husband and wife
_______________

Heptonstall

“stone-built town”

—Sylvia Plath

“Hardcastle Crags”

Flint-like my high heels—

Striking up a racket of echoes

Down the steely street—

Moon-blue rooks in the alleys

Stone-built town there—

Tireless, tied to Western past

Tracing Strong City’s roots—

Its Railroad-Cattle Wounds

Down the fissured valley—

Santa Fe tracks to Kansas City

Lost lusts under his boots—

The dream-people Town slept

Nothing dwelt in the town—

Equal to his moneyed grasp

Granite guises and shadows—

Antique looming landscapes

Sway of Chase County power—

Couldn’t wait to get away