What It Means To Be A Gay Poet

Speaking strictly as a man who enjoys sucking cock, I have always seen myself as a member of Poets Anonymous: one more individual trying to make sense of a universe largely hostile to my desires. I am not sure if this (the cock sucking, I mean, not the universe) qualifies me to be a gay poet. It is so hard to know what anything signifies in the world these days. My desires or cock sucking.

I do use the word gay sometimes in my work, but hardly (now that I think about it) in reference to myself. This is not a political statement. Aristotle may believe that man is a political animal, but somebody should tell Aristotle that I am not an animal. I am not a man either. I am a cocksucker, a different beast altogether. You see, I show up everywhere I go as a mysterious mathematical variable—usually an “I”—doing whatever the authorities have forbidden: swinging from chandeliers, peeing in potted palms, smoking cigarettes, making love, that sort of thing. One wonders why?

I think I must have trouble seeing myself as a member of a collective, community mind. I have discussed these feelings of isolation with other members of my support group—Catullus, Andrew Marvell, John Keats, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, A.E. Housman, Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, and that cute cashier, Chad, at my favorite coffee shop in Queens. The consensus among us seems to be—at one time or another—we have all been loved or hated as individuals.

In other words, cocksuckers. Whether we were sucking cock or not.