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 [...]
Categories: gay, imagined histories, photography, poem, word
Tagged: poetry, Thom Gunn, vintage, vintage gay photo
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 [...]
Categories: gay, imagined histories, photography, poem, word
Tagged: Nazim Hikmet, Turkish poets, vintage, vintage gay photo
A happy New Year! Grant that I
May bring no tear to any eye
When this New Year in time shall end
Let it be said I’ve played the friend,
Have lived and loved and labored here,
And made of it a happy year.
Back from Christmas break, Happy New Year to all from Woolf and Wilde.
Text: Edgar A. Guest
Image: Photographer, [...]
Categories: gay, imagined histories, photography, poem
Tagged: 2010, men, New Year, tuxedo, vintage, vintage gay photo
Click to hear song:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
hide me in your hollows
taste the salt that clings to me
shipwrecked in your shadows
scented by the sea
hide me in the wisdom of your thighs
ride me like a wave
chart my secret places
navigate my shores
map the ocean’s traces
lick them from my pores
dry me with delusion and desire
ride me [...]
Categories: gay, imagined histories, lesbian, music, photography
Tagged: gay, lesbian, love, sailors, vintage, vintage gay photo
WHEN I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d;
And else, when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy;
But the day when I rose at dawn from the [...]
Categories: gay, imagined histories, photography, poem, word
Tagged: bed, gay, love, vintage, vintage gay photo, vintage male affection, vintage photography, Walt Whitman, WHEN I heard at the close of the day
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 [...]
Categories: gay, imagined histories, photography, poem, word
Tagged: Ganymede, Michael Montlack, vintage, vintage gay photo, vintage male, vintage male affection
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 [...]
Categories: Uncategorized, gay, imagined histories, photography, poem, word
Tagged: e.e. cummings, i like my body when it is with your, poem, Threshold, vintage, vintage gay photo, vintage male affection
I invited him to choose between women and me. I thought he was going to choose me and that he’d strive to renounce them. I was in error. “I risk making a promise,” he replied, “and not keeping it. That would pain you. I don’t want you to be in pain. Breaking off would hurt [...]
Categories: gay, imagined histories, photography, word
Tagged: Jean Cocteau, Le Livre Blanc, The White Paper, vintage, vintage gay photo, vintage male affection
I want to cry my pain and I am telling you so you will love me and cry for me in a nightfall of nightingales with a dagger, with kisses and with you.
I want to kill the only witness to the assassination of my flowers and change my weeping and my sweating into an eternal [...]
Categories: Uncategorized, gay, imagined histories, photography, word
Tagged: Frederico Garcia Lorca, poem, sailors, The Poet Speaks the Truth, vintage, vintage gay photo, vintage male affection
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more [...]
Categories: gay, imagined histories, photography, poem, word
Tagged: gay halloween, ghosts, Halloween, spirits, vintage, vintage gay photo
