Trash Rises

Okay, I admit it. The summer so far is wonderful. Lazy days spent with my pen to the page, nose in a book, or butt in the kitchen (my three favorite alone activities) sprawl into late nights dancing ecstatically at holes-in-the wall or on front porches in Fort Sanders. It's all I dreamed it would be back in late March, when I. Just. Couldn't. Take. It. Anymore. Tonight I'm attending a "White Trash Bash," where I will wear a sleeveless, stained Boomsday t-shirt from 2000, denim cut-offs, and a "Preferred Insulation and Fireplaces" ball cap while swilling cheap beer and grooving to some R.E.O. Speedwagon. And Confederate Railroad, since I like my women just a little on the trashy side.

In honor of the trash-tacular events planned, I share with you a (shitty) first draft of a poem that might be a little creepy, but shouldn't raise any concerns. Unless of course those concerns are about the quality of writing, in which case, please share your constructive criticism.

“Lovely Boy with Sleeve of Tattoos”

You are not the rebel

You want to be.

You are rebel enough for me.

Oh, trick-jumper,

Bicycler,

Why do you buy your mushrooms and weed?

Things don’t make you eccentric but

Ideas, boy,

Notions of love,

Untenable actions of your taught, lean frame.

You are more vulnerable than

You think you are

You are vulnerable enough for me.

Sparrow tattooed,

Pocked pore face,

Come.

We can explore eccentricity.

P.S.-- Don't you think "On Front Porches in Fort Sanders" would be a great title for a poem?

"locking me to you/ As if we were still twenty-two"

Remember those 6-10 lines? Well for the past five days or so, the strangest images have been popping up in mine: emo (girl-jeans-wearing, chain-smoking, angsty-poetry-writing) boys and (this is outta nowhere) Toad Suck Park. Last night I tried to write the emo boy poem. I used a picture to inspire me. I got some good language on the page ("a close rubbing-up-against in the mess of my generation dancing like a pow wow on X), but the poem still needs direction. I woke up this morning thinking about who I could read to give me a model for where to go, and I automatically thought of Thom Gunn.

Gunn approaches homoerotic desire and situations in his poetry very directly, but he's not as crass as, say, Allen Ginsberg (no Howl-ing images of "angel headed hipsters fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists" in Gunn's work). I thought I'd check out some of his poems to see how I can deal with the similar theme going on in the poem I'm writing.

What I discovered is I don't like the way Gunn does what I want to do. I don't like his use of heroic couplets and ABAB rhyme scheme. I do, though, like how he manages to expand the situation from one erotic moment to something larger, more affecting. That's why I'll share this poem with you:

The Hug

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 of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.