Art Durkee
Art Durkee holds open the door for us that leads into the colourful, passionate and sensual world of homo-eroticism. He embraces everything from the most delicate of haikus to the tumultuous and fleshy outpourings of imagination. We've only just begun to explore his work on this page, his educated voice crossing any perceived gender barriers since the emotions he deals with are universal - Love, Loss, Passion, Sorrow, Joy, Need and a desire to be accepted for exactly whom and what we are... without masks.
Longing
Crying over you, too tired for sleep: the absent lover, the phantom kiss, the missing caress. I touched your secrets, holding you like no one had; you sighed, content. Now, all gone, this winter night leaves nothing but cold iron smiles. By the empty roadside, six little Jizo herd my wanderings. Cleaning out boxes, old pictures of you, your other lovers, I slide them through the shredder, make slices of the past.
remembered decades
of young men loved and loving—
ashes in the mouth
The sweaty afternoon we read Jataka tales, playfully touching: this naked dream world. Hiking trails above the woods, skinny-dipping in an alpine lake, pine breezes cool heaving chests, ancient red rocks bathed in sweat. Ten thousand Buddhas, carved from the wood of your flesh; or one, in your heart. Before you left, the last time, "Let's pretend," you said, "that we still love each other."
his silk robe unfastening,
lace-of-willows behind the ear—
frost every night now
before he leaves
(after Cavafy)
He is beautiful when he sleeps,
the fights, and readiness to fight,
the masks of a hardened life:
in repose erased. He seems
younger then, in the blue
before dawn. When he wakes
and climbs from bed, when
he hugs you close and asks for coffee,
lines reassert their place,
the world takes its cloak again.
Still, he will have a smile for you.
You want to see the boy’s face soften
all morning. But he is of the street:
you’ll never be allowed so close.
Letting Go, Always, Again
but lovers
aren’t like butterflies:
you can’t pin them
to a wall, and leave them there
and hope they’ll pose
forever;
no, they will insist
on cutting the puppet-strings
and getting on their own feet
to strut about
with incipient purpose
and vague opinions.
but if you let them fly,
wherever they touch earth
they brighten it,
making gardens,
and their light will refract
the hours like mosaic glass.
let them go.
don’t try to
trim their pinions.
the best ones
will cook you breakfast.
The Labyrinth Walk in the Garden of Forking Paths
The sexiest men alive all read Borges. They are the polyamorous polymorphously perverse men whom I am interested in encountering. Like the men who prowl the hardware stores at night looking for a quick romp back in the hardwood stacks, the men who I wish to encounter prowl the labyrinthine stacks of the Library of Babel, roaming the reading rooms with arcane tomes such as The Tantra Sutras, The Qabalah of Sex and Loving, and the Geometry of Desire. They know, presciently, that they will encounter just around the next corner the man with whom they are destined to meet. They carry opened books in their arms that guide them through the corridors of the Library, and along the rose-encrusted ways of the Garden of Forking Paths. In their eyes are visions of the jaguar of love, prowling his tracks with relentless, ecstatic joy.
The sexiest men alive read Cavafy. They can recite “Days of 1901” in bed while making sweaty, sensual love. They can with a whisper or a single eloquent word so heighten the pleasure of coitus that one’s mind explodes into a blank field of white light. These are the men who linger in the cafés lining the road that leads to the lost Library of Alexandria, the way they hold their rolled scrolls and Library satchels indicating a semaphore of specific tastes, lusts, and desires. Their hair is fragrant with butterflies, their eyes dark as sea-wine, their hands warmed between mine on cold, damp nights.
The sexiest men alive frolic nude and unashamed on beach or field or mountain, and yawp Whitman at the top of their lungs. They tear off their clothes as soon as they come home after work, and stay naked till they must go out again. They lie in bed reading, eating succulent chocolate-dipped fruits, making love to you with gesture, voice and eyes. They open themselves to your kiss after being turned on by your mind. They reveal themselves to you by the inkstains on their fingers, and the direct stare of the hunting eagle. They pursue the geography of pleasure between cities, and in trackless wastes they follow the arrows of their desire.
I look for you in the Library, in the cafés where pretentious black-clad art students juggle portfolios with stacks of Beat poetry, in the alleys behind used book stores where we can dumpster-dive the arcane detritus of civilized history, at poetry readings in furtive musty shops lit by a few naked bulbs. I seek you on the streets in October, with the wind blowing leaves across your eyes, tangling in your long black hair. I whisper quiet secrets in the back corners of dim rooms on the waterfront, sharing hidden desires and oblique strategies of ensorcelled enchantment. I look for you on the shores of an ocean drenched with sun and rain, where we can shiver together in arched caves washed with kelp and sea-foam, where we can hold hands openly and leave wet footprints behind us that the surf will wash away in our sleep. I hunt for you in the basins of light that spread between the thighs of mountain ridges. I am the voice of rustling insect wings that wakes you before dawn. I am the star in the tree that guides you home, and I am the fox that makes a den between your thighs. I know you for the true saint you are. I love you for being the spirit of light and shadow intertwined, this rough beast that slouches between desert and sea, seeking a home between the pages of a book of fables, secrets, and truths that no one yet has spoken aloud, in languages no one has heard for centuries. I am the scarlet wing of the blackbird looking at you from a fencepost. I am the rim of the earth, encompassing you. I want to make love to the whole sky, and you are the night constellations.
I look for you among the lilies and the rosebushes, the twisting vines of the arbutus that overhang an orrery, in a hidden grove in the Garden of Eden. We meet to compare the lore of snakes, and play the game of rat and dragon. I engineer this Library search so that you hear my voice rising to you from the scent of catalog cards. I dwell in your innermost mind, and whisper in your ears every sunset. I am waiting. Pull this living card from the between the ranks of desiccated leaves spread across the tables where you wander to read. I await your discovery, and our destined meeting, inevitable, just around the next corner.
dockworker
(for C.P. Cavafy)
It’s not that it’s Greece, or the Alexandrian poet walking,
it’s not even the crews of rough-necked labor boys.
It’s that brightest light where the sun
slices his torso, a vertical slash
dividing his body, a sun-knife through the maze:
half brightness, half shadow,
the brighter half moist with sun-sweat
the darker expanding in his breaths,
till you can’t reconcile the source.
In that small gasp, the Alexandrian poet ceases
all walking, all breath, the god reflected
in the sun glazing his spectacles.
And for a breath, cane forgotten,
shoulders enlivened and lips parted in surprise,
must worship: him: Pan, the rising
of the blood in brighter, darker flesh.
Taman Pujah, Bali
hibiscus flowers
behind his ear, all he wore—
sacred temple boy
•
At the auspicious moment of penetration—
the boy become a goddess, and enacting Her rape—
the violating angel leans hard on his back,
pushes in up past the guarded door.
And both gasp, both filled with the power
that floods the living green world with life:
both glow in their coupling and plunging,
the boy-goddess feels his body ignite—
melt from vapor to flesh, as the dark angel’s hand
envelops his rod like a stick-shift towards overdrive,
and with the contractions of birthing
that signal the end of the act: release.
release Her in him: in himself.
The goddess reborn in this wife of a boy.
ancient eyes
His eyes black with shadows in the late afternoon amber light. His arms rounded and firm, perfect collarbones. His breath the scent of loam just after a summer rain shower. Musk of his sweat as he strips off his shirt and wipes his chest with it. He never looks at you till it's too late, and, then his gaze locks on yours with an audible click. Caught, an insect in hardening resin, your heart skips a beat, thuds, kicks in your breast. Just the hint of a smile breaks through his angelic indifference. Caravaggio knew this curly-haired, dark angel. He's even in the paintings no one has seen.
sultry look, a kiss,
move together skin to skin—
water through a reed
You knew, the first time he came up the stairs to your narrow, sun-warmed flat, that you would one day love him. The perfect curves of his thighs, the translucent shirt he wore, the web of muscle across his back and hips. His lips barely parted, as he silently panted from the heat and the climb. He stayed to listen to records on the scratchy phonograph, smiling without speaking, then grinned for the first time as he left. You knew he would be back. He'd find some excuse to visit, some reason to knock. His ancient eyes, as he looks at you from under his brow, calmly waiting.
fading autumn sun
casts shadows on your body—
how soon we grow old
his parchment skin, his voice
Dawn sun bronzes his flanks, moves across the bed in slow waves. He's breathing deep and quiet, lying on his side, long black hair tangled in pillows, blankets shoved below his thighs by restless dreams. I found him in the bookstore last night and brought him home. He chattered about literature as he disrobed. His arched back as he bent to remove his boots. Eros of flesh and mind: dropping his pants, grinning, he quoted Whitman and Foucault. He made animal sounds in his throat while we made love in the bath, till we were pruned and sweaty. Ribs, arms, nipples rubbed together, the kiss of bodies merging. My hands cupping his buttocks as I kissed his navel. He sighed, and asked me if I loved to read, too.
his silent breathing,
after long nights of poetry:
moon-craters rise and fall
in your shoals
Tide moves in
low across the rocks, a few
blowholes spuming geysers, shocking
the gulls. Two wheels, a turn, a landing;
nothing else moves.
Tide moves up along the ridge
of mussels, calving around ankles
of wet basalt, indigo kelp drying;
into the notch of the bay,
that rising.
Tide lingers, lapping
at gill, barnacle, grassblade, abalone eye.
Salmon are wandering the trees, lifting
belly towards headland, bridal call
and seamouth gape.
As I move, belly down,
rising, an iguana climbing a steep boulder,
tongues lapping into.
ghazals
Heady fragrance of citrus, grape, and blood
fills our nostrils as we sup this passionate wine.
That night, cool and wet, when you arrived at my door
disheveled, your passionate kisses tasted of new wine.
Olives touched by sun, a lemon sliced and warming,
fresh garlic, your fingers on my neck an impassioned wine.
He made breakfast in the morning, passionate with a knife
and carving block, an omelette, an orange, a drop of wine.
It's night: somewhere, you're sitting awake, as I am here,
your passion making you restless, calmed by this light wine.
Red with secret passions, our fingers covered with spent seeds
and the blood of stamped grapes, pants rolled up, we dance in this year's wine.
adrift off the Cyclades
the Greeks lead me past the night cafes of Alexandria,
the road’s desolation, that hideous war,
to the girl in the olive garden on Crete,
to Ithaka, and back to Alexandria
—you interrupted me,
with the wings of pale shoulders
leaving your white tank-top like birds,
hunched down in the poetry section
to read the titles
distracted as you stood
the curve of your back, your narrow waist
and flaring hips, the way your shirt’s fabric
hugged to you no less than my gaze
listing in the summer heat strolled on
as I turned back to the Greeks,
listless, unechoed, unpursued
I want to see them all naked
all the shirtless boys hiking on the bluffs
I want to see them slowly drop their pants
there in the sunlight under the breeze-tossed pines
I want to see them all throw away their shirts
and grin shyly and playfully as they drop their shorts
teasing as the hips appear, and the rounded buttocks
teasing me with just the bases of their penises revealed
until they slowly, slowly push their elastic waistbands down
and their cocks spring up like stiff pennants
I want to kiss all the handsome naked boys
hugging them there under the trees
their bodies sweating from the climb in the summer air
their arms shivering with gooseflesh from the cooler air
under the trees, and with gooseflesh from being turned on
I want to kiss the handsome boys
and play with their nipples
kiss their armpits and lick their ribs
I want to nuzzle their ticklish belly buttons
and smell their groins, their sweat and animal musk
and slowly, gently, kiss the tips of their cocks
standing erect in the wind and sunlight
I want to feel their hands resting lightly
on my shoulders as I suck their cocks
I want to moan with pleasure
as all the boys moan with pleasure
arching their backs and tossing their heads
there in the pine grove, with the sun and wind moving through
I want to play with their balls
I want to rub their soft round asses
as I suck their penises, my roving hands
moving into all their most secret places
I want to laugh as all the boys cover their bellies
with their own come, gasping and sweating under the trees
I want to hold them close to me as they slowly recover
and slowly stop shivering with delight
until they lie still and replete and warm in my arms
and I want to lie on the sun-warmed rocks above the cliff
after making love under the pine trees
I want to lie naked in the sun and hold hands
and quietly enjoy the silence of the wind in the trees
as the sun warms all the dark places in us
and sets us free
I want to be free
bedclothes
rapture? no: just the handily erotic,
the lover near at hand, the night flesh.
tonight, only: never repeated. two collide
and part, lips avoiding kisses like commitment.
and after you’re gone, I take the bedclothes and,
instead of laundering, wrap myself in them,
in the remnants of your scent and warmth,
swaddle myself like an infant, and rock in the corner chair,
and remember. till the last trace of you lingers, remember.
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