The All-American Fairy
He stares at the mirror in total disbeliefIs that really him, that sad creature looking back?
He plucks out an intruding white hair,
A stranger in his aggressive, bushy eyebrows;
Those boyish good looks are still there he hopes
Although a little frayed, a little worn by time,
Maybe his forehead is a little higher than it used to be,
But he's sure he'd pass for thirty five or less.
He likes to think he's, well, rugged is his favourite word,
Manly, masculine, handsome, still quite a hunk
Surely no one would guess he was a fairy
(Not that he thinks of himself as such of course).
At least he knows better than to sport a clone moustache
Although he can't resist those sporty lumberjack shirts.
And he always acts so butch, striding manfully along,
Never mincing, resisting self-admiring glances at his reflection.
Working out at the gym, pumping iron, building his pecs
So they will be noticed by the sort of guy he likes.
Naturally, he has to take a lot of care at his sports club,
Being careful not to stare longingly at the other guys,
Eyes lingering on their taught little hairy buns
As they laugh and joke in the shower stalls,
And NEVER NEVER loitering in the urinals
As much as he would oh-so-much like to do.
Growing up gay in small town America is hard,
Especially when you prefer writing poetry to playing ball,
And when everyone in town knows everyone else
And who dated whom and who kissed whom;
So he had to go through the pretence of dating
But he showed respect for every father's daughter
What a gentleman he was, but in reality terrified
Of not being able to get a hard on when a girl said yes.
He kept his love life to frequent furtive visits
To the LA bath houses on longed-for weekends
When he escaped to visit his big-town relatives,
Only letting his true nature come to the fore
On hard saved-up for trips to foreign lands
Cavorting with carefree Mexican or Greek rent boys
Hanging out in gay bars where no one knew his folks
And he could try and forget about his guilt.
The years passed and he waited for his parents' death
So he could move house and be himself, a poet maybe,
A creative artist, be true to himself at last, but time never helped.
And even now he trolls the web under a pseudonym
Reduced to using a ten-year old photograph as bait,
A photo of him in his long since faded winsome prime.
And how sad it is he never made his mark upon the world,
Never lived up to his poor old Daddy's dreams.
He might have been an all-American soldier boy,
But, although he never had the balls for that,
He yields to no one in his blind patriotism,
And he's met a few cute marines in MacArthur Park
For an overpaid grope and blow job in the bushes.
How he misses his Mommy now, but how shocked she'd be
To see her forty-something fairy son staring at the mirror
With only a furry dog for company every night.
Poetry by Edna Sweetlove
Read 921 times
Written on 2006-09-17 at 13:22
Tags Humour Gay Sadness
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Edna Sweetlove |
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English War Veteran aged 98 |
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Zoya Zaidi |
