LA CABAÑA AZUL

                     

                   

                  In Memoriam Melissa Malindy Davis

                         Que su nombre no se olvide 

Lejos del cielo agitado,

de celajes y cambiantes,

dentro de un valle encerrado

entre colinas fragantes

de yasmín y madreselva,

está el lugar que yo añoro,

la cabaña azul.

                             Frente ella,

las aguas sueltas del arroyo

al pie del salto combado

trenzan perlas y brillantes

en sus rizos encrespados. 

Cruzo alegre el puentecito,

arco recio cimentado

en dos peños primitivos,

de la Creación sobrados. 

Frutas hay por todos lados:

Cada vez que allá visito,

naranjas y mangos tersos,

aguacates abultados

y racimos de guineos

tientan mi boca y mis manos. 

Para embelesarme más,

mientras subo hacia la puerta

de esta idílica cabaña,

gallardo el junco cimbrea

su tallo encaracolado. 

Pero lo que más me encanta

y mi corazón eleva

siempre a la cabaña azul,

es sentirme rodeado

de tu gran calor humano,

envuelto en el fuerte abrazo

con que me recibes tú,

que eres, más que amigo, hermano. 

http://www.musedmagonline.com/2012/08/hypermasculinity-the-search-for-a-real-man/

http://swaggermen.socialparody.com/file/download/4533075/1313961722.jpg

AN OPEN LETTER FROM STEPHEN FRY TO DAVID CAMERON AND THE IOC

I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis of a tyrant who had passed into law, two years earlier, an act which singled out for special persecution a minority whose only crime was the accident of their birth. In his case he banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations afflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they “polluted” the purity and tradition of what it was to be German, that they were a threat to the state, to the children and the future of the Reich. He blamed them simultaneously for the mutually exclusive crimes of Communism and for the controlling of international capital and banks. He blamed them for ruining the culture with their liberalism and difference. The Olympic movement at that time paid precisely no attention to this evil and proceeded with the notorious Berlin Olympiad, which provided a stage for a gleeful Führer and only increased his status at home and abroad. It gave him confidence. All historians are agreed on that. What he did with that confidence we all know.    

Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law. Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment. It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma. Let us not forget that Olympic events used not only to be athletic, they used to include cultural competitions. Let us realise that in fact, sport is cultural. It does not exist in a bubble outside society or politics. The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong. Everyone knows politics interconnects with everything for “politics” is simply the Greek for “to do with the people”.

An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillyhammer, anywhere you like. At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.     He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same. He may claim that the “values” of Russia are not the “values” of the West, but this is absolutely in opposition to Peter the Great’s philosophy, and against the hopes of millions of Russians, those not in the grip of that toxic mix of shaven headed thuggery and bigoted religion, those who are agonised by the rolling back of democracy and the formation of a new autocracy in the motherland that has suffered so much (and whose music, literature and drama, incidentally I love so passionately).    

 I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian “correctively” raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.

http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/

 

ELEGIAC LINES

For a young poet who committed suicide

Where have you gone?  I followed the signs—

You disappeared into labyrinths

Of crystals and words, leaving behind

Faded horizons and sunset tints,

Mist on a darkening lake, and wisps

Of whispering in empty rooms.

None of it is real now.  Where I am,

The field mice run, and crickets shriek,

Overripe pomegranates split, break,

Dribble pink seeds that the rats eat,

And nightly the owls strike.  So it

Comes down to feathers, fur, and bones.

Sometimes, in my mind, I go alone

To a Kentucky graveyard, and I stand
With empty hands beside your stone,

And ask again, Where have you gone?

http://rainbowcoloredsouth.blogspot.com/2013/11/good-morning-everyone_14.html

NOT THE BLUES

  

  
When I see you coming down the street,

I hear the music, I feel the beat. 

When you look me in the eye,

I take off and start to fly.

When you give me your warm hand,

I don’t know if I’ll ever land.

When your sweet tongue touches mine,

I drink lightning, I taste wine.                

When you touch me here and there,

My knees collapse, I gasp for air.

Let me love you like I want to do,

I never loved nobody like I love you.

RIFF:

My hair stands on end,
I get ice under my skin,

My eyes go blind,

Lightning shoots down my spine,

My hands start to shaking,       

My chest starts to aching,      

My knees start to give,

I don’t know if I’ll live, 

I can’t breathe, I can’t see,

You electrify me.

 

http://estrip.org/content/users/paul/1209/photo_4b29b47939790_1216.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lr1s8dzpPz1qiyi8uo1_500.jpg

and http://demoninthedark.tumblr.com/post/10125282461/rough-kiss#description

http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/ade/ed9/adeed911-843d-4f9a-8c59-f9e3930da7fc

A UN RÍO

Río pardo, soñoliento, 
que revuelcas hombros, brazos
perezosos en tu lecho
de verano reluciente
mientras trenzas los remansos
y raudales de tu pecho
y costado, enlazando 
los declives y hoyuelos
de tus ancas y tu vientre,
de tus muslos y tus flancos . . .

remolino, remolino . . . 
anudar y deslizar . . .
anudar y deslizar . . .

Bajaré a tus orillas,

llegaré hasta tu fuente,
me hundiré en tus corrientes
morenas . . .  me perderé,
río pardo, río mío,
en ti.    

http://srilankanmale.blogspot.com/2009/11/fifty-dollar-dreams.html

http://www.tyrain.com/pics/hunks/101027_seth_kuhlman_04.jpg

THE MIRROR TELLS

The following poem, from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, is rarely reprinted, for the obvious reason.  The poem refers to the myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection.  (Narcissus and Jonquil are two names for the same flower.)  I think that the first stanza is the most effective.  Below Housman's poem I have placed one of my own, probably uconsciously inspired by his, though mine clearly does not refer to Narcissus.

                            XV 

         Look not in my eyes, for fear

            They mirror true the sight I see,

         And there you find your face too clear

            And love it and be lost like me.  

         One the long nights through must lie

           Spent in star-defeated sighs,
         But why should you as well as I
            Perish? gaze not in my eyes.

         A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,

             One that many loved in vain,

         Looked into a forest well
              And never looked away again. 

         There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
                With downward eye and gazes sad,
         Stands amid the glancing showers 
            A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.

THE MIRROR TELLS

(For Gilbert)

The mirror shows me how I have decayed:
My sagging muscles, wrinkles, and tired eyes;
How brutal time took from me, in rough trade,
My youth and strength, but didn’t leave me wise.

And, on reflection, I look back to when,

Always envisioning something marvelous,
I trolled the bars behind the shouldering men—
Gods, warm and hard, fragrant and dangerous.
                      

And, caught up in the strenuous, sensual dance
In which each man both won and was the prize,
I, whom they never gave a backward glance,
Had failed, in all that time, to recognize 

How much I’d lost—until one day, by chance,
I found myself reflected in your eyes.  

http://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/311/675/311675995_640.jpg

https://s3.amazonaws.com/2013backup/tnh/ImagesUp/Daskalakis.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanisland/5305055393/ 
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieuCDgeDBUA7lz7rMbu6HGcoMUecv3mFS3Zy0SfEz5u74pGZHLFyaqbqHAfs_yPWYrbdrpfbgmVEdrs9fAP-3sLBmvihqgbiYnYuMOFtdgM5zHQsOQzuAqiryYxhFZkZ6WV1gcGZIEBeE/s1600/tumblr_mh5sd2tg9y1r43my7o1_400.jpg