If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: if you pardon, we will mend: And, as I am an honest Puck, If we have unearned luck Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue, We will make amends ere long; Else the Puck a liar call; So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends.
The mischievous Puck ends A Midsummer Night’s Dream with these lines. It is one of my favorite passages from Shakespeare.
Let’s talk about gay sex baby Let’s crow about its beauty daily Place away your shades of shame And trace in me a sacred flame Lend me your lips, boy And of your muscled hips I will speak and enjoy Give me the words Of your body’s supple burn And into silver zodiacs I will write the codes My desire in you has cracked Of naked bodies and buttocks And cocks and jockstraps My tongue between your shoulderblades Tattoos them with my name That I will dare to speak And dare to speak again Down into the dip of your back My mouth will murmur rapt Then I let my whispers lick First one gluteus muscle Before on to its perfect brother Hear my hands On your flesh slap And the parting of your pretty ass To reveal your winking, pink anus In the hush of my first kiss The sensation’s racing Instantaneous Spiralling up your spinal cord Exploding into your loosened brain Uttered as a gasp and a word That was there from the beginning:
“Fuck”
And I say, “yes…”
I’m not talking about gay sex To shock or cause stress I’m talking about it Because no one else is Our gay comedians Are asexual chameleons No sex, please We’re gay and on TV
And I’ve heard my straight mates say: “I don’t mind it happening As long as I don’t hear about it” Well here, now, it’s happening And it’s hard and it’s fast and it’s racing A gasp and a whimper The sound of flesh whacking flesh Of my penis inside him It’s sweat dripping from one man to another A soaring, writhing ecstasy of kissing It’s in your face It’s in your head It’s in the space Where angels fear to tread
Because my sex is part of my identity My sex makes me and shapes me And I’m not going to stop it and lock it And shut it up Not for you and not for me My sex is laced with shame My sex is the wrong sex My sex was illegal My sex instils fear It’s parks after dark And it’s public toilets And it’s AIDS Like David Stuart said: “When your parents think of sex They see your sister married You and your boyfriend It’s shit on dicks” My sex is a sin without name And try telling this To the two 20-year-old boys I interviewed last week Who both have HIV Because they’re not told About gay sex in schools And they’re not told About transmission And the condom, they are told, Is there to stop pregnancy
But lastly my sex is my gift To be shared safely With rising sensation Of move and thrust and kiss My sex lives in excited eyes It whispers between fingertips My sex is in his smile It’s in his pleasure And what we share together My sex speaks now and always will Of the word we all call love
Patrick Cash is a queer journalist and creative writer based in London, prominently known for hosting two LGBTQ-friendly open mic nights: the poetry and performance night, “Spoken Word London,” the gay men’s well-being forum, “Let’s Talk About Gay Sex & Drugs,” and the theatrical showcase event Dark Fabrics Cabaret. He writes on various subjects, including much arts/culture, and works as Assistant Editor for QX Magazine. Find him on Twitter @paddycash.
Cash’s main focus when writing poetry is emotional truth. He believes we are sometimes smothered by falsity in the modern world, from social media performance to creepy algorithm-led advertising, and good art cuts through that superficiality. If you achieve authenticity of feeling in your poem, then that truth will resonate deeply with your audiences, whatever your surface differences of sexuality, gender, or race.
Cash believes it is important for queer poets to be heard to engender understanding of the queer experience. He said that if you’ve grown up straight, male and privileged, then queerness may seem like a very alien—even threatening—concept to you. Yet all humans understand what it is to feel different, and innate concepts like shame and hope. Queer poets not only empower queer people, but use their words as conduits for empathy.
When asked about the future of queer poetry, Cash said, “Greater visibility, more mixed queer/straight readerships and more mainstream literary recognition. In some ways, I feel the age we’re living in of LGBTQ rights and queer literature is partially comparable to the Harlem Renaissance bringing black literature to mainstream America in the ’20s. Queer poetry deepens our understanding of multifaceted humanity.”
Sable clouds by tempest driven, Snowflakes whirling in the gales, Hark—it sounds like grim wolves howling, Hark—now like a child it wails! Creeping through the rustling straw thatch, Rattling on the mortared walls, Like some weary wanderer knocking— On the lowly pane it falls.
Fearsome darkness fills the kitchen, Drear and lonely our retreat, Speak a word and break the silence, Dearest little Mother, sweet! Has the moaning of the tempest Closed thine eyelids wearily? Has the spinning wheel’s soft whirring Hummed a cradle song to thee?
Sweetheart of my youthful Springtime, Thou true-souled companion dear— Let us drink! Away with sadness! Wine will fill our hearts with cheer. Sing the song how free and careless Birds live in a distant land— Sing the song of maids at morning Meeting by the brook’s clear strand!
Sable clouds by tempest driven, Snowflakes whirling in the gales, Hark—it sounds like grim wolves howling, Hark—now like a child it wails! Sweetheart of my youthful Springtime, Thou true-souled companion dear, Let us drink! Away with sadness! Wine will fill our hearts with cheer!
————-
ЗИМНИЙ ВЕЧЕР
Буря мглою небо кроет, Вихри снежные крутя: То, как зверь, она завоет, То заплачет, как дитя, То по кровле обветшалой Вдруг соломой зашумит, То, как путник запоздалый, К нам в окошко застучит.
Наша ветхая лачужка И печальна и темна.— Что же ты, моя старушка, Приумолкла у окна? Или бури завываньем Ты, мой друг, утомлена, Или дремлешь под жужжаньем Своего веретена?
Выпьем, добрая подружка Бедной юности моей, Выпьем с горя; где же кружка? Сердцу будет веселей. Спой мне песню, как синица Тихо за морем жила; Спой мне песню, как девица За водой поутру шла.
Буря мглою небо кроет, Вихри снежные крутя: То, как зверь, она завоет, То заплачет, как дитя. Выпьем, добрая подружка Бедной юности моей, Выпьем с горя; где же кружка? Сердцу будет веселей.
About the Poet
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (Александр Сергеевич Пушкин) was born on June 6 [O.S. May26] 1799 and died on February 10 [O.S. January 29] 1837) was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.
Pushkin was born into the Russian nobility in Moscow. His father, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, belonged to an old noble family. His maternal great-grandfather was Major-General Abram Petrovich Gannibal, a nobleman of African origin who was kidnapped from his homeland and raised in the Emperor’s court household as his godson.
He published his first poem at the age of 15, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Upon graduation from the Lycée, Pushkin recited his controversial poem “Ode to Liberty”, one of several that led to his exile by Emperor Alexander I. While under the strict surveillance of the Emperor’s political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play, Boris Godunov. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was serialized between 1825 and 1832. Pushkin was fatally wounded in a duel with his wife’s alleged lover and her sister’s husband, Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d’Anthès, also known as Dantes-Gekkern, a French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment.
Sitting under the mistletoe (Pale-green, fairy mistletoe), One last candle burning low, All the sleepy dancers gone, Just one candle burning on, Shadows lurking everywhere: Some one came, and kissed me there.
Tired I was; my head would go Nodding under the mistletoe (Pale-green, fairy mistletoe), No footsteps came, no voice, but only, Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely, Stooped in the still and shadowy air Lips unseen—and kissed me there.
About the Poet
Walter de la Mare was born on April 25, 1873, in London. He is the author of numerous books, including The Listeners (Constable & Company, 1912) and The Veil and Other Poems (Constable & Company, 1921).
Walter de la Mare is considered one of modern literature’s chief exemplars of the romantic imagination. His complete works form a sustained treatment of romantic themes: dreams, death, rare states of mind and emotion, fantasy worlds of childhood, and the pursuit of the transcendent.
Near Clapham village, where fields began, Saint Edward met a beggar man. It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled, The old man trembled for the fierce cold.
Saint Edward cried, “It is monstrous sin A beggar to lie in rags so thin! An old gray-beard and the frost so keen: I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine.”
He stripped off his gaberdine of scarlet And wrapped it round the aged varlet, Who clutched at the folds with a muttered curse, Quaking and chattering seven times worse.
Said Edward, “Sir, it would seem you freeze Most bitter at your extremities. Here are gloves and shoes and stockings also, That warm upon your way you may go.”
The man took stocking and shoe and glove, Blaspheming Christ our Saviour’s love, Yet seemed to find but little relief, Shaking and shivering like a leaf.
Said the saint again, “I have no great riches, Yet take this tunic, take these breeches, My shirt and my vest, take everything, And give due thanks to Jesus the King.”
The saint stood naked upon the snow Long miles from where he was lodged at Bowe, Praying, “O God! my faith, it grows faint! This would try the temper of any saint.
“Make clean my heart, Almighty, I pray, And drive these sinful thoughts away. Make clean my heart if it be Thy will, This damned old rascal’s shivering still!”
He stooped, he touched the beggar man’s shoulder; He asked him did the frost nip colder? “Frost!” said the beggar, “no, stupid lad! ’Tis the palsy makes me shiver so bad.”
About the Poem
The Saint Edward referred to in this poem is Edward the Confessor (c. 1003 – 5 January 1066), one of the last Anglo-Saxon English kings. As king, Edward developed a reputation for living a simple, pious lifestyle and being generous with the poor. Some reports indicate that he longed for a monastic life and took a vow of celibacy, as he and his wife never had children. He was associated with legends including a story from towards the end of his life. Edward was riding by a church in Essex and an old man asked for alms. As the king had no money to give, he drew a large ring off his finger and gave this to the beggar. A few years later two pilgrims were travelling in the Holy Land and became stranded. They were helped by an old man, and when he knew they came from England, he told them he was St John the Evangelist and asked them to return the ring to Edward telling him that in six months he would join him in heaven. The story is one of fourteen scenes from the king’s life – real and legendary – carved on a mid-15th-century stone screen in Westminster Abbey. Also shown are his birth, his coronation, Christ appearing to Edward at Mass, and the dedication of a church, assumed to be the Abbey.
While Edward spent much of his life in exile in France, particularly Normandy, Edward’s love for the region of his childhood can be seen in one of his greatest architectural achievements, the building of Westminster Abbey. The story goes that Edward vowed that if he should return safely from exile in Normandy to his kingdom, he would make a pilgrimage to St Peter’s, Rome. But once on the throne he found it impossible to leave his subjects, and the Pope released him from his vow on condition that he should found or restore a monastery to St Peter. This led to the building of a new church in the Norman style to replace the Saxon church at Westminster.
The king’s piety had greatly endeared him to his people, and he came to be regarded as a saint long before he was officially canonized as Saint and Confessor by Pope Alexander III in 1161. His nickname reflects the traditional image of him as unworldly and pious. Edward’s reputation for piety and charity was widespread, and he was viewed with great veneration, even being considered a patron saint of England. In 1139, the prior of Westminster Abbey traveled to Rome to ask the pope to canonize Edward, but the appeal was rejected amid political disputes. Edward was buried in Westminster Abbey, which was completed shortly before his death. His body remains there today, although the abbey is now an Anglican church.
About the Poet
On July 24, 1895, Robert Graves was born in Wimbledon, near London. His father, Alfred Perceval Graves, was a Gaelic scholar and minor Irish poet. His mother, Amalie von Ranke Graves, was a relation of Leopold von Ranke, one of the founding fathers of modern historical studies. One of ten children, Robert was greatly influenced by his mother’s puritanical beliefs and his father’s love of Celtic poetry and myth. As a young man, he was more interested in boxing and mountain climbing than studying, although poetry later sustained him through a turbulent adolescence. Graves received his early education at a series of six preparatory schools, including King’s College School in Wimbledon, Penrallt in Wales, Hillbrow School in Rugby, Rokeby School in Kingston upon Thames and Copthorne in Sussex, from which last in 1909 he won a scholarship to Charterhouse.
Robert Graves was bisexual, having intense romantic relationships with both men and women, though the word he coined for it was “pseudo-homosexual.” Graves was raised to be “prudishly innocent, as my mother had planned I should be.” His mother, Amy, forbade speaking about sex, save in a “gruesome” context, and all skin “must be covered.” At his days in Penrallt, he had “innocent crushes” on boys; one in particular was a boy named Ronny, who “climbed trees, killed pigeons with a catapult and broke all the school rules while never seeming to get caught.” At Charterhouse, an all-boys school, it was common for boys to develop “amorous but seldom erotic” relationships, which the headmaster mostly ignored. Graves described boxing with a friend, Raymond Rodakowski, as having a “a lot of sex feeling.” And although Graves admitted to loving Raymond, he would dismiss it as “more comradely than amorous.” In his fourth year at Charterhouse, Graves met “Dick” (George “Peter” Harcourt Johnstone) with whom he would develop “an even stronger relationship.” Johnstone was an object of adoration in Graves’s early poems.
In 1913 Graves won a scholarship to continue his studies at St. John’s College, Oxford, but in August 1914 he enlisted as a junior officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He fought in the Battle of Loos and was injured in the Somme offensive in 1916. While convalescing, he published his first collection of poetry, Over the Brazier. By 1917, though still an active serviceman, Graves had published three volumes. In 1918, he spent a year in the trenches, where he was again severely wounded.
During the war, Johnstone remained a “solace” to Graves. Despite Graves’s own “pure and innocent” view of Johnstone, Graves’s cousin Gerald wrote in a letter that Johnstone was: “not at all the innocent fellow I took him for, but as bad as anyone could be”. Johnstone remained a subject for Graves’s poems despite this. Communication between them ended when Johnstone’s mother found their letters and forbade further contact with Graves. Johnstone would later be arrested for attempting to seduce a Canadian soldier, which removed Graves’s denial about Johnstone’s infidelity, causing Graves to collapse.
In January 1918, at the age of twenty-two, he married eighteen-year-old Nancy Nicholson, with whom he was to have four children. Traumatized by the war, he went to Oxford with his wife and took a position at St. John’s College. Graves’s early volumes of poetry, like those of his contemporaries, deal with natural beauty and bucolic pleasures, and with the consequences of the First World War. Over the Brazier and Fairies and Fusiliers earned Graves his reputation as an accomplished war poet. After meeting the American poet and theorist Laura Riding in 1926, Graves’s poetry underwent a significant transformation.
In 1927, Graves and his first wife separated permanently, and in 1929 he published Goodbye to All That, an autobiography that announced his psychological accommodation with the residual horror of his war experiences. Shortly afterward, he departed to Majorca with Laura Riding. In addition to completing many books of verse while in Majorca, Graves also wrote several volumes of criticism, some in collaboration with Riding. During that period, he evolved his theory of poetry as spiritually cathartic to both the poet and the reader. Although Graves claimed that he wrote novels only to earn money, it was through these that he attained status as a major writer in 1934, with the publication of the historical novel I, Claudius, and its sequel, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina. (During the 1970’s, the BBC adapted the novels into an internationally popular television series.)
At the onset of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Graves and Riding fled Majorca, eventually settling in America. In 1939, Laura Riding left Graves for the writer Schuyler Jackson; one year later Graves began a relationship with Beryl Hodge that was to last until his death.
After World War II, Graves returned to Majorca, where he lived with Hodge and continued to write. By the 1950s, Graves had won an enormous international reputation as a poet, novelist, literary scholar, and translator. In 1962, W. H. Auden went as far as to assert that Graves was England’s “greatest living poet.” From 1961 to 1966, Graves returned to England to serve as a professor of poetry at Oxford. In the 1970s his productivity fell off; and the last decade of his life was lost in silence and senility. Robert Graves died in Majorca in 1985, at the age of ninety.
[I’m happiest now when most away] By Emily Brontë – 1818-1848
I’m happiest now when most away I can tear my soul from its mould of clay, On a windy night when the moon is bright, And my eye can wander through worlds of light.
When I am not, and none beside, Nor earth, nor sea, nor cloudless sky, But only spirit wandering wide Through infinite immensity.
About the Poem
“I’m Happiest When Most Away” by novelist Emily Brontë is short and meaningful. The speaker in this poem enjoys taking time alone to disengage from the world and contemplate life. The poem can be interpreted in many ways– one of which is that peaceful, quiet contemplation can have a positive impact on one’s life. Readers can infer that the speaker’s life wouldn’t be worth living without this time for contemplation.
About the Poet
Emily Jane Brontë, born on July 30, 1818, in Thornton, England, was a novelist and poet from the Romantic era. She is the author of the novel Wuthering Heights (Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847), today regarded as a classic of English literature. She died on December 19, 1848.
This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride this day down into night, to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page with the pale gray ghost of my hand.
Tomorrow, I will turn 45. Somedays, I can’t believe I am 45 years old, then other days, I feel every minute of my age. However, the depiction of “A Happy Birthday” in this poem by Ted Kooser, sounds like a pretty good way to end a day.
About Ted Kooser Poet Laureate of the United States, 2004-2006
Ted Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa on April 25, 1939. He received his BA from Iowa State and his MA in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he is currently a visiting professor in the English department.
He is the author of twelve collections of poetry published from 1980 to as recent as 2018. He has written several fiction and nonfiction books including Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (Bison Books, 2002), which won the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003. His honors and awards include two NEA fellowships in poetry, a Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize from Columbia, and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. In the fall of 2004, Kooser was appointed the thirteenth United States Poet Laureate.
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
—Genesis 1:27
Jesus at the Gay Bar By Jay Hulme
He’s here in the midst of it – right at the centre of the dance floor, robes hitched up to His knees to make it easy to spin.
At some point in the evening a boy will touch the hem of His robe and beg to be healed, beg to be anything other than this;
and He will reach His arms out, sweat-damped, and weary from dance. He’ll cup the boy’s face in His hand and say,
my beautiful child there is nothing in this heart of yours that ever needs to be healed.
About the Poem
I saw this posted on Wilson Cruz’s Instagram (@wcruz73), and it just grabbed my heart and nearly brought tears to my eyes. It is such a beautiful poem and a sentiment that we should all remember: “my beautiful child / there is nothing in this heart of yours / that ever needs to be healed.” Genesis 1:27 tells us, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” It does not say God created man in the image of other men or what other men want you to be. He said we were created in “His own image…male and female He created them.” It’s a beautiful thing to remember. No matter what others tell you that you should be, remember, you are who you are because God created you that way, whether that is gay or straight, cisgender or transgender, male or female, or any of the colors of the rainbow, God created you that way.
About the Poet
Jay Hulme is an award-winning transgender performance poet, speaker, and educator. Alongside his writing and regular performances, he teaches in schools, performs sensitivity reads and consults, and speaks at events and conferences on the importance of diversity in the media, and, more specifically, transgender inclusion and rights. In 2017 he gave a TED talk and was featured in Nationwide Building Society’s “Voices” advertising campaign, with him and his work appearing in both TV and radio adverts.
In recent years Jay has worked alongside and/or consulted with Amnesty International, The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, Stop Funding Hate, and The Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards, among other groups, on inclusion and diversity in literature, especially YA and children’s literature, and has performed confidential inclusion and sensitivity reads for a number of large publishers, improving the quality and accuracy of transgender representation in a number of books.
Jay is currently Poet-in-Residence at ‘The Poet’s Church’, St Giles-in-the-Fields in Central London.
Writer
Jay performs his poetry across the country regularly, as both stand-alone sets, and as part of larger events. He occasionally writes essays as well as poetry, and his work has been published in a number of magazines and journals, as well as anthologies by both independent and well-known publishers, including Bloomsbury and the Ladybird imprint of Penguin Random House.
He has been focusing, most recently, on poetry for children and young adults, and the five-poet collection “Rising Stars”, of which he was a part, was Highly Commended in the 2018 CLiPPA awards – the UK’s biggest award for children’s poetry collections.
His most recent collection, “Clouds Cannot Cover Us” is aimed at teenagers, was published by Troika Books in October 2019, and has been nominated for the 2021 Carnegie Medal – ‘the UK’s oldest and best-loved children’s book award’ (their words).
Speaker
As a speaker, he has given a number of high-profile talks, almost all of which also included the performance of one or more of his poems. Most notably, he’s spoken at 2019’s London Book Fair, the 2018 Children’s Media Conference, and 2017’s TEDx Teen. He has also spoken in Parliament about trans rights, alongside Stonewall and PinkNews, and has worked with large and small companies on LGBT inclusion, as well as working with a number of NHS Hospital Trusts, giving talks and staff training focused on ensuring transgender patients are provided with dignity and adequate medical care.
Educator
As an educator, Jay has taught poetry to adults and children and has worked in libraries and a number of schools, primary and secondary, state and private, working alongside the curriculum to not just expand the pupils’ knowledge of poetry but to generate enthusiasm and excitement for a form that is so often seen as difficult and intimidating. Pupils often express how their perspective on poetry has changed, and their teachers report that their enthusiasm for and engagement with poetry remains long after their visits. Jay also teaches poetry to adults through lectures at universities and through workshops, at venues as varied as libraries and theatres, and at festival sites and pubs. He has also been the coach of the Durham University Slam Poetry Team since its first year. The team has, under his tutelage, won ‘Slam of the North’, and come third in ‘UniSlam’, the UK’s biggest team poetry slam competition.
Jay gained a BA (honours) degree in English Literature and Journalism in 2018, focusing, in his final year, on Victorian Sensation novels, and how they informed and reflected the morality and social mores of mid-19th century British society. He has also taken part in short training courses in order to develop his own practice and educational skills, including a course with the National Literacy Trust focused specifically on working with primary school students, and a course run by Pop-Up Projects and Historic Royal Palaces on the use of heritage sites in literary education and as stimuli for creative writing, something which is very much a passion of his.
Joe
The Closet Professor 