Naked in New York


One of the beauties of Contemporary Gay Culture, or maybe post-modern homosexual culture is that there is an intellectual cum sensual approach to everyday life that allows a baby boomer to encapsulize the experience with photos from an Australian magazine along with a poem written during the Beat Era in San Francisco. There are worse things one could do than being naked in New York reading California poetry and looking at Australian photography (from Lewis Payton).


A Poem For the Old Man


God love you
Dana my lover
lost in the horde
on this Friday night
500 men are moving up
& down from the bath
room to the bar

Remove this desire
from the man I love.
Who has opened
the savagery
of the sea to me.
See to it that
his wants are filled
on California Street
Bestow on him
largesse that allows him
peace in his loins.
Leave him not
to the moths.

Make him out a lion
so that all who see him
hero worship his
thick chest as I did
moving my mouth
over his back bringing
our hearts to heights
I never hike over
anymore.
Let blond hair
burn on the back of his
neck, let no ache
screw his face
up in pain, his soul
is so hooked.

Not heroin
Rather fix these
hundred men as his
lovers & lift him
with the enormous bale
of their desire.
Strip from him
hunger and the hungry
ones who eat in the night.
The needy & the new
found ones who would weigh him down.
Weight him w/pride and -
pushing the love I put
in his eyes.

Overflow the 500 with it
Strike them dumb,
on their knees, let them
bow down before it,
this dumb human
who has become
my beloved
who picked me up
at 18 & put love
so that my pockets
will never be empty,
cherished as they are
against the inside flesh
of his leg.

I occupy that space
as the boys around me
choke out desire and
drive us both back
home into the hands
of strangers.

(John Wieners 20 June 1958)

Thank you DNA for the photography.

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