"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.