Essex Hemphill: “We keep treasure any king would count as dear”: Poems of lust, poems of tenderness
Posted: June 29, 2013 Filed under: English, Essex Hemphill | Tags: Black gay poets Comments Off on Essex Hemphill: “We keep treasure any king would count as dear”: Poems of lust, poems of tenderness
ZP_portrait by Rotimi Fani-Kayode_Dennis Carney and Essex Hemphill in Brixton, London, 1988. Hemphill is holding Carney and kissing the back of his neck.
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Essex Hemphill (1957-1995)
From: Ceremonies (1992)
“Rights and Permissions”
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Sometimes I hold
my warm seed
up to my mouth
very close
to my parched lips
and whisper
“I’m sorry,”
before I turn my head
over the toilet
and listen to the seed
splash into the water.
.
I rinse what remains
down the drain,
dry my hands –
they return
to their tasks
as if nothing
out of place
has occurred.
.
I go on being,
wearing my shirts
and trousers,
voting, praying,
paying rent,
pissing in public,
cussing cabs,
fussing with utilities.
.
What I learn
as age advances,
relentless pillager,
is that we shrink
inside our shirts
and trousers,
or we spread
beyond the seams.
The hair we cherished
disappears.
.
Sometimes I hold
my warm seed
up to my mouth
and kiss it.
. . .
“Object Lessons”
.
If I am comfortable
on the pedestal
you are looking at,
if I am indolent and content
to lay here on my stomach,
my determinations
indulged and glistening
in baby oil and sweat,
if I want to be here, a pet,
to be touched, a toy,
if I choose
to be liked in this way,
if I desire to be object,
to be sexualized
in this object way,
by one or two at a time,
for a night or a thousand days,
for money or power,
for the awesome orgasms
to be had, to be coveted,
or for my own selfish wantonness,
for the feeling of being
pleasure, being touched.
The pedestal was here,
so I climbed up.
I located myself.
I appropriated this context.
It was my fantasy,
my desire to do so
and lie here
on my stomach.
Why are you looking?
What do you wanna
do about it?
. . .
“Invitations All Around”
.
If he is your lover,
never mind.
Perhaps, if we ask,
he will join us.
. . .
From: Earth Life (1985)
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“Black Beans”
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Times are lean,
Pretty Baby,
the beans are burnt
to the bottom
of the battered pot.
Let’s make fierce love
on the overstuffed
hand-me-down sofa.
We can burn it up, too.
Our hungers
will evaporate like – money.
I smell your lust,
not the pot burnt black
with tonight’s meager meal.
So we can’t buy flowers for our table.
Our kisses are petals,
our tongues caress the bloom.
Who dares to tell us
we are poor and powerless?
We keep treasure
any king would count as dear.
Come on, Pretty Baby.
Our souls can’t be crushed
like cats crossing streets too soon.
Let the beans burn all night long.
Our chipped water glasses are filled
with wine from our loving.
And the burnt black beans –
caviar.
. . .
“Better Days”
.
In daytime hours,
guided by instincts
that never sleep,
the faintest signals
come to me
over vast spaces
of etiquette
and restraint.
Sometimes I give in
to the pressing
call of instince,
knowing the code of my kind
better than I know
the National Anthem
or “The Lord’s Prayer”.
I am so driven by my senses
to abandon restraint,
to seek pure pleasure
through every pore.
I want to smell the air
around me thickly scented
with a playboy’s freedom.
I want impractical relationships.
I want buddies and partners,
names I will forget by sunrise.
I only want to feel good.
I only want to freak sometimes.
There are no other considerations.
A false safety compels me
to think I will never need kindness,
so I don’t recognize
that need in someone else.
.
But it concerns me,
going off to sleep
and waking
throbbing with wants,
that I am being
consumed by want.
And I wonder
where stamina comes from
to search all night
until my footsteps ring
awake the sparrows,
and I go home, ghost walking,
driven indoors to rest
my hunter’s guise,
to love myself as fiercely
as I have in better days.
. . .
From: Conditions (1986)
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“Isn’t It Funny”
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I don’t want to hear you beg.
I’m sick of beggars.
If you a man
take what you want from me
or what you can.
Even if you have me
like some woman across town
you think you love.
.
Look at me
standing here with my dick
as straight as yours.
What do you think this is?
The weathercock on a rooftop?
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We sneak all over town
like two damn thieves,
whiskey on our breath,
no streetlights on the back roads,
just the stars above us
as ordinary as they should be.
.
We always have to work it out,
walk it through, talk it over,
drink and smoke our way into sodomy.
I could take you in my room
but you’re afraid the landlady
will recognize you.
.
I feel thankful I don’t love you.
I won’t have to suffer you later on.
.
But for now I say, Johnnie Walker,
have you had enough, Johnnie Walker?
Do-I-look-like-a-woman-now?
Against the fogged car glass
do I look like your crosstown lover?
Do I look like Shirley?
.
When you reach to kiss her lips
they’re thick like mine.
Her hair is cut close, too,
like mine –
isn’t it?
. . .
“Between Pathos and Seduction”
(For Larry)
.
Love potions
solve no mysteries,
provide no comment
on the unspoken.
Our lives tremble
between pathos and seduction.
Our inhibitions
force us to be equal.
We swallow hard
black love potions
from a golden glass.
New language beckons us.
Its dialect present.
Intimate.
Through my eyes
focused as pure, naked light,
fixed on you like magic,
clarity. I see risks.
Regrets? There will be none.
Let some wonder,
some worry, some accuse.
Let you and I know
the tenderness
only we can bear.
. . .
“American Wedding”
.
In america,
I place my ring
on your cock
where it belongs.
No horsemen
bearing terror,
no soldiers of doom
will swoop in
and sweep us apart.
They’re too busy
looting the land
to watch us.
They don’t know
we need each other
critically.
They expect us to call in sick,
watch television all night,
die by our own hands.
They don’t know
we are becoming powerful.
Every time we kiss
we confirm the new world coming.
.
What the rose whispers
before blooming
I vow to you.
I give you my heart,
a safe house.
I give you promises other than
milk, honey, liberty.
I assume you will always
be a free man with a dream.
In america,
place your ring
on my cock
where it belongs.
Long may we live
to free this dream.
. . .
Essex Hemphill (1957 – 1995) was a poet and activist, as frank and raw – and as radical – as one can get. Hemphill’s compañero (and hero) in activism was Joseph Fairchild Beam (1954 – 1988), writer, editor, Black-Gay civil-rights agitator for positive change. In a 1984 essay Beam declared: “The bottom line is this: We are Black men who are proudly gay. What we offer is our lives, our love, our visions. We are rising to the love we all need. We are coming home with our heads held up high.”
When Hemphill wrote “In america, place your ring on my cock where it belongs” he was probably – though one cannot be sure – not talking about the symbolic ring of the traditional marriage rite as we all know it. And yet…his fervent desire was for Black, Gay Americans to be meaningfully re-connected to their own communities, communities to which they felt a powerful yearning to belong – having never left them, deep down in their hearts. We feature the following photographs because we feel that Hemphill – even though he called his black, gay world “this tribe of warriors and outlaws” – would get it. To paraphrase the final line of his poem American Wedding: Long may you live to free your dream.
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ZP_Two women celebrate with friends and relatives after their outdoor marriage in Washington Square Park , New York City, 2011.
ZP_After 33 years together these two handsome septuagenarian New Yorkers married legally in 2011. Dignity and great pride are evident on their faces.
ZP_2008 poster directed toward the fathers of young, black, gay men_Gay Men’s Health Center, NYC_© photographer Ocean Morisset_Essex Hemphill, were he alive today, would’ve been heartened by such an initiative, knowing full well that the blood, sweat and tears of many ordinary people – who are also activists who love their communities – made such progress possible.
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Zócalo Poets 