Because he had a sparse moustache
growing across his upper lip, a thin
precursor to manhood, an almost man—

because he smelled like cigarettes,
I loved Chris Muller that year.
I loved Chris Muller the day he asked

me into the locker room,
beyond the urinals and benches,
through the narrow hallway

of sweat and gym socks and the words
we used that would send us straight
to hell: Dickhead. Asshole. Fudgepacker.

We used words that would send us
straight to hell, but he had found one
that would get us there quicker,

had heard his father use it once,
a word so dirty it’d make you serve
twice your time in hell:

Pervert, he said his father said.
How his lips puckered at the word,
the hairy lip cowering over the mouth

like a stretched animal, a salt
pucker: A man who smells the seats
of bicycles, he said his father said.

And I believed him, saw him grab
the world as I knew it and drag a line
through the middle, between men

who smelled the seats of bicycles
and those who did not. It would follow
me the rest of that day: Pervert,

out to the concrete parking lot,
in the long line of locked bicycles,
in each wire spoke, it tensed—

Pervert, over the handlebar grip,
up the aluminum post, until I found
myself face first against the leather

seat of his bicycle, the nose of it
worn and soiled with use,
and because the line was drawn,

because the voice from within
was his, I listened: Go ahead,
sissy boy, take a whiff.

Text: The Fifth Grade, Angelo Nikolopoulos
Poem published in Ganymede, Issue 7, Spring 2010
Image: Subjects and photographer unknown, via Schwar/flickr

I never had you, nor will I have you
ever, I daresay. A couple of words, a closeness
as in the bar two days ago, and nothing else.
It is, I don’t deny it, a pity. But we who belong to Art
sometimes — with intensity of mind, and of course only
for a little while — create a pleasure
that gives the impression of being almost real.
So it was in the bar two days ago — with a good deal of help,
besides, from some merciful alcohol –
I had half an hour that was utterly erotic.
And it seems to me you understood,
and you stayed somewhat longer purposely.
It was rather necessary, that. Because
for all the imagination, for all the liquor’s a magician,
I needed to see your lips as well,
needed to have your body close to me.

Text: Half an Hour, 1917, unpublished poem
from C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn
Image: photographer, subject unknown, via exupery/ipernity

       person for miles around approach unawares,

Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or

      some quiet island,

Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,

With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,

For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.

Text: Walt Whitman,
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand (excerpt), 1881-82

Image: Subjects, photographer unknown,
via miss magnolia thunderpussy/ipernity

                                                                  i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

text: ee cummings
image: subjects/photographer unknown,
via varones/flickr

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
     Half of the night with our old friend
          Who’d showed us in the end
     To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
          Already I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
          Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
          Your instep to my heel,
     My shoulder-blades against your chest.
     It was not sex, but I could feel
     The whole strength of your body set,
       Or braced, to mine,
          And locking me to you
     As if we were still twenty-two
     When our grand passion had not yet
          Become familial.
     My quick sleep had deleted all
     Of intervening time and place.
          I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.

Text: The Hug, Thom Gunn
Image: Photographer, subjects unknown,
via Miss Magnolia Thunderpussy/ipernity

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example–
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people–
even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees–
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II

Let’s say we’re seriously ill, need surgery–
which is to say we might not get up
from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see if it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast. . .
Let’s say we’re at the front–
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We’ll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind–
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.

III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet–
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
–you have to feel this sorrow now–
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived”. . .

Text: ‘On Living,’ Nazim Hikmet
Translated by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing
Image: Photographer, sitters unknown; via Osvaldo E/flickr

Back from Christmas break, Happy New Year to all from Woolf and Wilde.

Text: Edgar A. Guest
Image: Photographer, sitters unknown; via Osvaldo E/flickr

O then each breath tasted sweeter—and all that day my food nourish’d me more — and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy — and with the next, at evening, came my friend;
And that night, while all was still, I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as directed to me, whispering, to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast — and that night I was happy.

Text: Walt Whitman, When I Heard at the Close of the Day
No. 11, Calamus, Leaves of Grass, 1860
Image: Photographer/subjects unknown, via varones/flickr

Is it possible
to be tattooed
by someone’s soul?

Only with eyes closed
can I trace outlines,
a slight raise on my unmarked skin
(even in creases: inner elbows,
between fingers and toes).
The designs always familiar
but too abstract to identify.

I mean, can one be widowed
by the living?

Carting the blank stone
from days into dreams
toward an open grave
in my front and back yards,
basement, bathtub.
Ever eluded by the body,
not the scent.

And if there is someone else one day,
will he sense this presence?

The fine slip beneath
my rumpled clothes.
The railing I reach for
even on shallow stairs.

Will you, Christopher,
be the mosquito netting
draping my honeymoon bed,
swaying almost imperceptibly in the dark
but allowing in breezes
that comb the hairs on my arms,
legs, chest?

Image: 1930s, photographer/sitter unknown
via DCwooten/flickr
Text: The Slip, Michael Montlack
Poem published in Ganymede, Issue 5, Oct. 2009

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh … And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

Text: e.e. cummings
Image: Photographer and subjects unknown
via picassoswoman/flickr