what you did was you saved my life, i won’t forget it

vintage photo of affectionate women, lesbian

Click to hear song:

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I got to sing, I got to dance, I got to be a part of a great romance
Still forbidden, still outrageous, only a few around us knew
but no one said a word it was contagious
We looked out the window as we watched the cars fly by
I look at you and I start to cry — what you did was you saved my life –
I won’t forget it

You said even if I left my girlfriend, packed up my stuff, loaded up my car,
Drove down to your house with good intentions and came through your door –
For what’s it worth

I got to love, I rode the rails, you came with me because you cared
I was broke and I was scared, you held my hand and took away my fear
We knew it couldn’t last and that was hard

We looked out the window as we watched the cars fly by
I look at you and I start to cry — what you did was you saved my life –
I won’t forget it


Image: Photographer, subjects, unknown, via Rebecca Wilde/Flickr
Text/Song: For What It’s Worth
Lyrics: Mike Campbell; Performed by: Stevie Nicks

 

Editor’s note: When I heard For What It’s Worth from the inimitable Stevie Nicks’ new album In Your Dreams, an image of two women who shared longing, love and heartbreak came to my mind. Indeed, I think a new lesbian anthem may be born. I include here only an excerpt of the audio. I highly encourage you to buy the album to hear the whole song, all of the songs, of a brilliant new work. — KH

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Published:
May 12, 2011 – 10:03 am
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By Kenneth Hill
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if you’re going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler

two men wrestling; vintage; gay

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it’s just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it’s thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I’m one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you’re going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler



 

Image: unknown
Text: Sleeping Wrestler by Mutsuo Takahashi
from Poems of a Penisist, 1975, translated by Hiroaki Sato

 

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Published:
April 25, 2011 – 10:52 am
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By Kenneth Hill
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the passionate shepherd to his love

Two gay men hug in the woods

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs,
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

They shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

 

Text: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,
Christopher Marlowe, published 1599
Image: Photographer, subjects unknown

 

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Published:
April 17, 2011 – 11:55 pm
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By Kenneth Hill
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let us carve a tiny star on each other’s chest

vintage gay couple, valentine heart

on this day
when there’s no holiness
in all this madness of tests
where the heart is
with the sharpest brass knife
let us carve a tiny star
on each other’s chest
watch them light up
bright red
we will bless them with our lips
drink life
neither a seven-year itch
nor death
can split


text: assotto saint, offertory on a seventh anniversary
image: photographer, sitters, unkown, via scumbeast/ipernity

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Published:
February 15, 2011 – 12:50 am
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By Kenneth Hill
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i’ll stay with you if time holds a miracle

two men in bathing costumes embracing and holding hands

If time holds a miracle
we’ll dance together
as two old men:
sunstroke scalps
dropped buttocks, watery thighs.
But our hands
how our bony, veiny, trembling hands
will find their partners
palm to palm, fingers rung round each other
and hold on tight
tight.
Dance me
dance me across the floor
I’ll stay with you
if time holds a miracle.


Text: Miracle, Bil Wright, 1991
Image: photographer, subjects, unknown; 1930s,
via ipernity/scumbeast

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Published:
January 30, 2011 – 3:00 am
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By Kenneth Hill
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marriage! what a strange word to be applied to two men!

Two men seated, vintage gay love
… Little by little the largeness of what has happened sweeps over me. I thought I realized it all that last night together; but first the intellect sees, and then when it has created its imaginative symbolism it gives the whole man something to live by. I saw very clearly that night and called it a marriage. The imagination has since been working, and I live body and soul in this new relationship.

Marriage is a mere term; only as a dynamic vivid thing does it dominate life. That is: you can visualize marriage or you can live it. Now I am living it.

Marriage! What a strange word to be applied to two men! Can’t you hear the hell-hounds of society baying full pursuit behind us? But that’s just the point. We are beyond society. We’ve said thank you very much, and stepped outside and closed the door. In the eyes of the unknowing world we are a talented artist of wealth and position and a promising young graduate student. In the eyes of the knowing world we would be pariahs, outlaws, degenerates. This is indeed the price we pay for the unforgivable sin of being born different from the great run of mankind.

And so we have a marriage that was never seen on land or sea and surely not in Tennyson’s poet’s dreams! It is a marriage that demands nothing and gives everything. It does not limit the affections of the two parties, it gives their scope greater radiance and depth. Oh it is strange enough. It has no ring, and no vows, and no wedding presents from your friends, and no children. And so of course it has none of the coldness of passion, but merely the serene joy of companionship. It has no three hundred and sixty-five breakfasts opposite each other at the same table; and yet it desires frequent companionship, devotion and laughter. Its bonds indeed form the service that is perfect freedom…


Text: Russell Cheney writing to F.O. Matthiessen
23 Sept. 1924, London;
source -  My Dear Boy, edited by Rictor Norton
Image: Photographer, sitters, unknown
- via Miss Magnolia Thunderpussy

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Published:
December 5, 2010 – 1:47 pm
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By Kenneth Hill
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i find my deliverance in you

Two boxers embracing, vintage, gay photo

Now when I am near to you, dear friend,
Passing out of myself, being delivered –
Through those eyes and lips and hands, so loved, so ardently loved,

I am become free;
In the sound of your voice I dwell
As in a world defended from evil.

When I am accounted by the world to be — all that I leave behind;
It is nothing to me any longer.
Like one who leaves a house with all its mouldy old furniture and pitches
        his camp under heaven’s blue,
        So I take up my abode in your presence –

I find my deliverance in you.



Text: Edward Carpenter, When I am near you, Towards Democracy, 1905
Image: Sitters, photographer unknown

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Published:
October 3, 2010 – 3:20 pm
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By Kenneth Hill
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dance me to the end of love

Men dancing with men.

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Published:
October 3, 2010 – 3:07 pm
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By Kenneth Hill
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i want to love you

two young sailors hugging gay vintage

I want to be the door in your jam–
always close to your strong members.
I want to swell with our humid love
so we will be stuck together.
Love-locked, your frame around my
solid core, we’d never be jimmied apart.

I want to be your vanity drawer,
to hide my treasures in you.
I want to be the nail driven homeward
to my life-purpose by your blows.
I wish to be the foil embracing
your dark stone– together a gem.

I want to love your gold shore,
to hug, caress, and kiss your shifting contours,
to batter relentlessly against
your changeless self during my storms,
to bejewel you during high tides,
and reveal your secrets during low.

I would be a fish to spend and draw
life swimming through and breathing you.
I’d be the white to your plump yolk,
to surround and nourish you as you grow,
to help you rise if you are beaten,
to be each figure and ground for each.

… I want to love you …




image: photographer, subjects unknown
text: I Want to Love You, Craig A. Reynolds

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Published:
August 7, 2010 – 11:14 am
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By Kenneth Hill
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i loved chris muller that year

vintage photo of two boys, on vintage bicycle, male affection, gay

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

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Published:
June 27, 2010 – 2:05 pm
Author:
By Kenneth Hill
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