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.
.
Essex Hemphill (1957-1995)
From: Ceremonies (1992)
“Rights and Permissions”
.
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)
.
“Black Beans”
.
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)
.
“Isn’t It Funny”
.
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?
.
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.
.
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.
. . . . .
“Baby, I’m for real”: Black-American Gay poets from a generation ago
Posted: June 18, 2013 Filed under: Don Charles, English, Lamont B. Steptoe, Steve Langley | Tags: Black gay poets Comments Off on “Baby, I’m for real”: Black-American Gay poets from a generation ago
. . .
“I dream of Black men loving and supporting other Black men, and relieving Black women from the role of primary nurturers in our community. I dream, too, that as we receive more of what we want from each other that our special anger reserved for Black women will disappear. For too long we expected from Black women that which we could only obtain from other men. I dare myself to dream.”
Joseph Fairchild Beam (1954 – 1988) from Brother to Brother: Words from the Heart, a passionate 1984 essay directed at all – not just gay – Black men
. . .
Lamont B. Steptoe (born 1949)
“Maybelle’s boy”
.
I get from other men
what my daddy never gave
He just left me a house
full of lonesome rooms
and slipped on in his grave.
.
Now
when muscled arms enfold me
A peace descends from above
Someone is holdin’ Maybelle’s boy
and whisperin’ words of love.
. . .
Don Charles (born 1960)
“Comfort”
.
When you looked and
saw my Brown skin
Didn’t it make you
feel comfortable?
.
Didn’t you remember that
old blanket
You used to wrap up in
when the nights got cold?
.
Didn’t you think about that
maplewood table
Where you used to sit and
write letters to your daddy?
.
Didn’t you almost taste that
sweet gingerbread
Your granny used to make?
(And you know it was good.)
.
When you looked and
saw my Brown eyes
Didn’t they look just like
home?
. . .
Don Charles
“Jailbait”
.
You better quit coming around here like that
with no shirt on
and them gold chains on your neck
.
In them tight shorts
halfway pushed down the back
and your jockstrap showing
.
Ass jerking from side to side
and your legs all sweaty and shining
.
Trying to talk dirty
with that Kangol hat cocked to one side
.
Some dude’s gonna grab you
yank them shorts right down
throw you ‘cross the hood of his car
and ram his dick up your little ass so hard
it’ll make you walk more funny than you do.
.
Couldn’t nobody blame him neither
the way you walk around
acting like you want something
.
Hell!
I may be the one who jams you –
You just better quit coming around here.
. . .
Don Charles
“If he hadn’t kissed me”
.
And the fool said to me
as he humped my behind:
“You ought to try
fucking a woman some time.”
.
“Gotta have you some pussy
to be a real man,”
he said while I jacked him off
on my divan.
.
I wanted to ask him
to see if he knew:
“Why would I mess with
a jackass like you,
if pussy was what
I wanted to do?”
.
And if he hadn’t kissed me,
I would have, too.
. . .
David Warren Frechette (died 1991)
“Non, Je ne regrette rien”
(for Keith Barrow and Larry McKeithan)
I had big fun if I don’t get well no more.
(“Going Down Slow”, as sung by Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland)
.
Sister Chitlin’, Brother NeckBone and
Several of their oxymoron minions
Circle round my sick room,
Swathed in paper surgical gowns.
.
Brandishing crosses, clutching bibles,
(God, please don’t let them sing hymns!)
Pestering me to recant the
Wicked ways that brought me here.
.
“Renounce your sins and return to Jesus!”
Shouts one of the zealous flock.
“The truth is I never left Him,”
I reply with a fingersnap.
“Don’t you wish you’d chosen a normal lifestyle?”
“Sister, for me, I’m sure I did.”
.
Let the congregation work overtime
For my eleventh-hour conversion.
Their futile efforts fortify
My unrepentant resolve.
.
Though my body be racked by
Capricious pains and fevers,
I’m not even about to yield to
Fashionable gay Black temptation.
.
Mother Piaf’s second greatest hit title
Is taped to the inside of my brain
And silently repeated like a mantra:
“Non, je ne regrette rien.”
.
I don’t regret the hot Latino boxer
I made love to on Riverside Drive
Prior to a Washington march.
I don’t regret wild Jersey nights
Spent in the arms of conflicted satyrs;
I don’t regret late night and early a.m.
Encounters with world-class insatiables.
.
My only regrets are being ill,
Bed-ridden and having no boyfriend
To pray over me.
And that now I’ll never see Europe
Or my African homeland except
In photos in a book or magazine.
.
Engrave on my tombstone:
“Here sleeps a happy Black faggot
Who lived to love and died
With no guilt.”
.
No, I regret nothing
Of the gay life I’ve led and
There’s no way in Heaven or Hell
I’ll let anyone make me.
. . .
David Warren Frechette
“The Real Deal”
.
Don’t want death to catch me crying and acting like I been bad.
Don’t want no hypocrites around my bedside making me feel sad.
When my man comes my way with His golden book and silver scythe,
Then says, “Come along now, David…it’s the end of your life!”
I’ll answer Him,
“I’m a natural fighter, I ain’t gonna go easy,
Although my breath is short, and my stomach quite queasy.”
If I must leave this world hunched over, I got this reliance
That death will have to find me – arms folded in defiance.
. . .
ZP_Donald W. Woods photographed in 1987 by Robert Giard
.
Donald W. Woods (1958 – 1992)
“What do I do about you?”
.
holy ghost of my heart
grinding my memory
humping my need
.
throw your head like the dinka
shake your arms like the maasai
a french whore flirting
lickin lips at strangers
.
been waiting for your lightbulb
to glow for me
.
waiting
to exchange hard ass love
calloused affection
.
slapping high fives
capable and competent
listless and lonely
.
turn the blaze up slow
so I can breathe your
mourning breath
wet my pillow
part your eyelids
.
I’m a typewriter
randy and selfish and wise
a sonnet
a beat box
.
serve the next line
in your salty metaphors
and smoked salmon humour
.
wet me with
the next line
.
the resounding refrain
of grown men in love.
. . .
Cary Alan Johnson
“Stoned”
.
I used your letter to roll a joint
and as your lies burned
I inhaled them;
they made me laugh.
. . .
Cary Alan Johnson
“Surrender”
.
Last night
I fell silently into your
black sea.
Hair everywhere, in my
mouth, deep inside me,
deep, deeper
than we’d ever
gone before.
Did you know this
time would come?
. . .
Djola Bernard Branner
“Red Bandanas”
(as rapped to 101 beats per minute minus-one)
.
red bandanas
mean fuck me
when worn
in the right
hip pocket
in the right crowd
.
on castro
or christopher
streets
.
but mine is worn
around the neck.
.
it means that
i am remembering
granddad
who wiped
the sweat from his
brow onto it
or used it to catch
the contents of
a cough
or laundered it /
and wore it
around his neck.
.
red bandanas
mean fuck me
when worn
in the right
hip pocket
in the right crowd
.
on castro
or christopher
streets
.
but mine is worn
around the neck.
.
it means that
i am remembering
moms
who placed it
in the palm of
my hand /
and dried
the tears she
cried in it
’cause her
father died
with nothing
but his /
.
red bandanas
mean fuck me
when worn
in the right
hip pocket
in the right crowd
.
on castro
or christopher
streets
.
but mine is worn
around the neck.
. . .
Steve Langley
“Tell Mama”
.
When I was 10 years old, I asked
my mama while she was making potato salad:
“Mama, what’s a homosexual?” She said:
“It’s a man who likes men.”
“What’s a lesbian?”
“It’s a woman who likes women.”
“What makes them like that?”
“I don’t know, son. Nobody knows.
It’s a freak of nature.”
.
When I was 14, I heard
her say to my stepfather:
“We can’t go nowhere
without you winkin’ and blinkin’
and makin’ advances at other men.
I see you.
I’ll never trust you as long as you got
a hole in your ass.”
.
When I was 17, I sat
with my mother on our front porch
as she shriveled from cancer.
We watched the stars, felt the breeze,
Tonight I would tell her,
tell her that I was like the men
she told me about,
that I was like my stepfather…
Ants gathered the words at my feet.
I felt them rise through my toes, my ankles,
and my legs. They were creeping through me,
at my waist, in my stomach, my chest.
My throat got thick, my tongue heavy.
I needed to tell her what she already knew.
I began,
But I couldn’t…..
. . .
Steve Langley
“Perseverance”
.
Build a wall
I’ll find a way to get over
Deal me a bad hand
Watch me change my luck
Turn up the heat
And I’ll make it colder
Do what you want
I’m never giving up.
. . .
Steve Langley
“Company”
.
I see stains
on your sheets
and tell myself
it’s chicken grease.
. . .
Steve Langley
“Checklist”
.
Say yes to love
Say no to sex
Say you, say me
Oh say can you see
We are afraid of each other
Say sister, say brother
Are you still messin’ ’round
Do you have a steady lover
Are you waitin’ for the cure
Are you sure
Are you savin’ yourself
Are you lovin’ yourself
Have you come yet
Are your dreams wet
Is your sex safe
Is it already too late?
ZP_Safe sex poster from 1985 produced by the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum
.
Steve Langley
“Confection”
.
i’m chocolate candy
a handful of cookies
the goodies you’re forbidden
to eat
i’m a piece of cake
a slice of pie
an ice-cream bar
that chills your teeth
think of me
as your favourite treat
a pan of popcorn kernels
waitin’ for the heat.
. . .
The poems we’ve gathered here were mostly originally published in chapbooks and literary journals between the years 1988 and 1992. Then, along with short-stories, essays and interviews, some of them were anthologized in Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men (1991), edited by Essex Hemphill, conceived by Joseph Fairchild Beam, with the project being managed by Joseph’s mother, Dorothy Beam. Others appeared in editor Assotto Saint’s Here to Dare: 10 Gay Black Poets (1992).
. . . . .
Saeed Jones: Cracking all of the “names” open
Posted: July 1, 2012 Filed under: English, Saeed Jones | Tags: Black gay poets Comments Off on Saeed Jones: Cracking all of the “names” open
Saeed Jones (USA)
Sleeping Arrangement
I
I’ve decided to let you stay
under our bed, the floor –
not the space between
mattress and metal frame.
Take your hand out
from under my pillow, please.
And take your sheets too.
Drag them under. Make pretend ghosts.
I can’t have you rattling the bed springs
so keep still, keep quiet.
Mistake yourself for shadows.
Learn the lullabies of lint.
II
I will do right by you:
crumbs brushed off my sheets,
white chocolate chip, I think,
or the corners of crackers.
Count on the occasional dropped grape,
a peach pit with fine yellow hairs,
wet where my tongue has been,
a taste you might remember.
I’ve heard some men can survive
on dust mites alone for weeks at a time.
There’s a magnifying glass on the nightstand,
in case it comes to that.
. . .
Obviously, I was meant to be a gazelle
When grandpa growled at the dinner table, I wanted to leap into a sprint.
Gazelles did that sort of thing when startled. They leaped
into mid-air like sprung mousetraps, and then they were nothing
but brown blurs cutting across the plains.
Sometimes the gazelle in me would try to sprint in spite of myself,
but my bow legged and awkward bones kept me at a steady jog.
I would run back and forth across the backyard for hours.
This was Memphis. There were lions behind every oak and chain link fence.
One day, I was running around the backyard, alone as usual,
when a gun went off in the distance. The sound echoed off the house.
I stood in the middle of the yard, perfectly still,
still enough to blend into the grass. It was a rough neighborhood.
Guns seemed to be going off all the time.
When my grandma heard the shot, she rushed outside
and stopped on the porch. For a moment, she looked at me
as if I had been shot. I answered her stare by running off.
. . .
Saeed Jones grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and now lives in New York City.
He has an MFA from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
A 2011 nominee for the Pushcart Prize, Jones comments:
“The question of whether I’m a gay poet who happens to be black or a black poet who happens to be gay, or a poet who argues that such things as “blackness” and “gayness” need not proceed my nouns is just one that I — almost literally — enjoy dancing with. It troubles my waters; it keeps me questioning my self/selves; these days all I have are my questions…Or maybe it’s just easier to debate gay/black and black/gay poems rather than to write the poems themselves. Or maybe I want to crack all of the “names” open!”
. . . . .
Zócalo Poets 