“The Return of the Repressed”

And oh, darling Freud, I adore you, sweet daddy,
Longing, lusting with a flashing passion
In blistered boudoirs from here to Curacao.
I dream you, gorgeous in leather and lace,
Strolling down Tunisian shorelines;
You ivory fingers stroke your secret place.
I’m throbbing to be plundered
By your cabalistic fucking,
To serve you well beneath the Bombay moon.
For you’ve taught me that life’s just a murder mystery,
A maze of hidden doors and hairy, grasping hands.
So beat me, mistreat me. Drowned in orchids and cocaine,
I can’t save myself. Sweet Sigmund,
I’m crazy just for you.
Take me again, love, as you did in Swaziland,
Pinned up against a whitewashed wall,
Brutal fandango beneath the searchlights’ glare.
I’m almost all atremble to confess
How moist my need is, steaming.
You, your darkness, your desperado destiny;
Dear demon Freud of the Tropicana night,
I spread myself in readiness, await your great
And swelling thighs. I’m yearning, baby, burning.
Analyze me til we melt in sperm and blood,
Until we die, ego, id, and all,
Of sweaty, sweet, and secret love.

“Obsessed by the Myth of the Road”

I am in deadly earnest: trucks.

The handsome trucker wore torn, faded jeans,
and love never entered his mind. (You
see, it can be written,
a simple declarative sentence
which I know you will not ever read.)

Another: gasoline fumes and poppers
swirled, the driver inhaled deeply.
(Things get so much easier now,
past two a.m. with its dubious charms.)
Unfinished freeways, biceps and semis,
misaligned headlights which shine on betrayals,
the poet by his supposed craft,
the trucker by his small white pills, betrayed.

And it’s all in deadly earnest here:
a horizon of boarded-up truckstops;
the double white line which traces
the dangerous curve of back into buttocks;
this barren interstate line.

The gorgeous trucker I’ve invented,
certain that no one’s looking,
slides his hand across his tee shirt,
then down past his lonely belt,
as meanwhile, at another crossroads,
a wordy roadmap spread across my knees,
I try to find a route to you,
stalled out somewhere in the Utah of desire.

“Son et Lumiére”

Dazzling. It is of no small concern,
That way the light drips down,
Strokes his dove-soft skin. The
Lookers-on are left to chart
Lust’s minute particularities. Sincere,
All meaning lies in bend of elbow,
Buttocks’ curve. That’s love. He knows,
Improbably impressionist,
How sun’s suffused by pubic hair
At morning. From the next room,
A saxophone is heard
On someone’s radio. Jazz, then,
Wriggles moistly
Amidst the glowing moments
Which sprawl like winded crustaceans
On blue bedsheets, which laugh against
A foot,
Hard nipples, knees.

 

© 2008 Simon Sheppard

Simon Sheppard is the editor of the Lambda-Award-winning Homosex: Sixty Years of Gay Erotica and of Leathermen, and the author of books including In Deep, Sex Parties 101, and Kinkorama: Dispatches From The Front Lines of Perversion. His work has also appeared in nearly 300 anthologies, and he writes the syndicated column "Sex Talk" and the online serial "The Dirty Boys Club." He hangs out at www.simonsheppard.com.

Wanna know more about Simon Sheppard? www.simonsheppard.com

Poetry Editor’s Note: Founded in 1974 by Andrew Bifrost, Mouth of the Dragon was the first gay poetry journal to publish more than a few volumes. It lasted for 17 issues between 1974 and 1980, and published nearly every significant poet of the gay liberation era. Little is known of Andrew Bifrost, particularly after 1980. Even his original name and date of death are obscure, although it is known that he contracted and died from AIDS.

While going through back copies of Mouth of the Dragon for a project I have been working on, I found that well-known gay erotica writer Simon Sheppard had published poems in the journal. He has graciously agreed to allow us to reprint some of these poems.

“The Return of the Repressed” was first published in Mouth of the Dragon, No. 9, July 1976. “Son et Lumiere” was first published in Mouth of the Dragon No. 10, December 1976. “Obsessed by the Myth of the Road” was first published in Mouth of the Dragon Nos. 11 and 12, a double issue covering March and June of 1977.