Thank you to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared:
Poetry Review, Poetry London, PN Review, Rialto, Swimmers, clinicpresents.com, Butchers Dog, The Poetry of Sex (Penguin, 2015) and Wound (Rialto, 2016). Thank you also to the following writers for their words, queer theories and translations: Walt Whitman, David. M. Halperin, Valerie Traub, Sigmund Freud, Vatsyyna, Leo Bersani, Michel Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Mark Doty, Socrates, Jean Genet, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ellis Hanson, Adam Philips, D. A. S. S.
Eliot, Martin Sorrell, A. S. Kline, Norman Shapiro, Edmund White, Donald Revell, David Wojnarowicz, Henri Peyre, Stanley Burnshaw and Haydon Bridge. Profound thanks to Matthew Hollis, Lavinia Singer and Hamish Ironside; and so much gratitude to Daljit Nagra and Edward Doegar for their unflinching belief in these poems. Additional thanks are due to the Poetry Society, the Michael Marks Charitable Trust, the Arvon Foundation, Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Snape Maltings, the Poetry Trust, Poetry London, Harvard Universitys Center for Hellenic Studies, Goldsmiths College, the Faber Academy and the Rialto. Loving thanks are due to my brother, sister, mother and father; and to Rhona Johnstone, Joan Scott and Margaret Theophanous.
Thanks also to Alice Dixon, Owen Willetts, Abigail Parry, Michael Mackmin, Chrissy Williams, Anna Selby, Rene Doegar, Hannah Lowe, Rebecca Perry, Edwin Burdis, Liz Berry, Maura Dooley, Mike Sims, Sarah Macdonald, Jamie George, Elspeth Henderson, Matina Goga and Lina, Alex and Rafael Mahdavi for their support, encouragement and collaboration. All the poems in this book are dedicated to my partner Daniel, who makes everything possible.
In the library where there is not one gay poem, not even Cavafy eyeing his grappa-sozzled lads I open again the Golden Treasury of Verse and write COCK in the margin. Ink stains my fingers. Words stretch to diagrams, birth beards and thighs, shoulders, fourgies. One biro-boy rubs his hard-on against the body of a sonnet, another bares his hole beside some Larkin.
A blue sailor spooges over Canto XII. Then I see it nestled like a mushroom in moss, tongue-true and vaunt a queer subtext and my pen becomes an indigo highlighter inking up what the editor could not, would not the violet hour of these men hidden deep within verse. I underline those that nature, not the printer, had prickd out; rimming each delicate stanza in cerulean, illuminating the readers-to-come
loose the stop from your throat WALT WHITMAN
boys were my saplings my whiff of green my sprouts a hundred soft palms reaching for my warmth boys were my herbs square-stemmed furred scented with musk dank clove & lovage boys were my crops my ripe-red yield my seeds each one exploding onto my lips like sherbet boys were my vines my creepers my climbers tattooing my neck back & thighs with suckle boys were my nettles my thistles my thorns tickling me with scratches & painting me scarlet boys were my berries my dolls eyes my yew bitter on the tongue dizzying & psychedelic boys were my pitchers my fly-traps my venus a petalled mouth wet throat around a grave
I know how I will die then in a death roll scales to my cheek claws sunk into my pale shoulders water burning my throat like whiskey the un countable rows of yellowed teeth ringing my scalp and in the heat of the thrashing river he will press his white rawness into me like that man who held me from behind when I didnt know sex and gripped my mouth like a muzzle and unsheathed his anger stubble grazing my neck see I have died already and somehow survived hauled myself up from the river mud to taste blue air though I was not the same I was carrion bleeding into the silt and didnt I wear those wounds well pity me the boy who cried crocodile I have these moments when I know I wanted it asked for it even to be special to be scarred wading along the riverbank feet in the brown flow flirting with wildness the green violence in the shallows and I know he is swimming back to me his horned body slipping through sediment and weed for nothing ever really heals he can smell the red meat of me bait lighting up the river
remember when I ached to bottom be sub missive after a lifetime of playground fisticuffs and you you urged patience bought me a valentines day gift of moulded silicone this marbled root which shone like a newly hatched grub and glistened with spit when you put the tip into your mouth and pressed its malleable girth against my hole remember how I flinched and you bit my ear to distract me from this muscular shuddering this movement of internal peony-dense flesh this sting-twisting and somewhere near the centre of me I could feel a dilating like how a sea-anemone releases its blood-rich tentacles into the saline current remember how I came in your hand then external symbol made fetish I tell you now I had been waiting years to feel this brimming over this stoppered-up this ripe fullness
after Vincenzo BelliniPerduta, perduta io son! FELICE ROMANI
I dont remember when I lost it my greenhorn my cherry my only wedding satin is the skin of my inside wrist thighs and as far as lilies go Im an arabesque amaranthine puce scarlet etc all those fancy names for red that just mean red you can be humble white unopened but I tell you we all bleed when it comes to it you can sing of the april lily the pearl the ice cave but we all bud in muck and shit
youre a little boy when you sleep all curled up shrimp like your pillow-creased cheeks dank brow and is it me youre dreaming of eyelids caught in birdlime clementine lips in a mid-dream duet who is this sound that comes to you in the beetle-blue night an
O a
B a
V perhaps just never an
R tell me his name darling roll closer sing it into the feathered pillow so I might hold it against your gorgeous mouth
there you go again silver plating the bus stop you make my veins pop blue as a boy I could name all your waters sea of crisis sea of cold you did not turn away as I jerked off explored my down with your darling beam oh satellite follow me home and I will open my walls for you tonight I want your lidless eye your pearly hum wash my beard with translucence transmute my skin to semi-precious metal enter my mouth my anus with light
lidl roses dont last they rot even a dash of 7up in the vase cant save them the skin-pinks slacken scrotum like the reds crumble to eczema scabs
I did not know you would fade so soon oh flower and in the cemeteries after pentecost boys are heaping the overblown fetid and sick into wheelbarrows scrubbing the gravestones with horsehair wiping the lichen from your initials
Children bring me coins to watch him balanoire, tomb they imagine he has a forest inside, they close their eyes to see him foraging on a high cliff above a burnished lake belly to the wet earth but inside is just a savage who loves with only his claws, his wild mouth, tears at honeyed flesh with his barbed tongue so I tamed him with a rod, a crop, my fist starved him until he would dance this way, that way. At six oclock you should see me count my money hatfuls of brass and gold. I uncouple his snout, rub a drop of lotion in, pour myself a drink as my father unzips his bear skin places his naked head on my lap throat exposed.