New Years Eve

At A Heavenly Gay Bar

At the top of the grand stairs, beneath Cocteau’s mural

of sailors in the placid blue of a Breton harbour

a young John Gielgud stands between two marble-topped credenzas,

tosses back a drink, grinds out a cigarette in an ashtray overstuffed with butts

and declaims, “Angus Wilson and Tony Garrett,”

the attitude of his voice at odds with his eyebrows,

which Angus observes and wheels around in a swish of linen and silk

set to bop the actor on the hooter with his silver-topped cane

when Cecil Beaton cries “Say cheese” and snaps the photo

that will command this night for posterity.

*****

Guests arrive in smoke and taffeta, leather and feather:

Sal Mineo, barely eighteen and already knowing what he wants in a girl,

Jimmy Dean, reflecting the glow of Sal’s angelic beauty;

Kathy Acker in pink and blue polyurethane pursued by Tallulah

so sharp on her feet she scatters sparks across the floor

and here’s Tony Jackson arm in arm with Darby Crash —

they met just now under the trees, one in tails,

the other in rips and zips, both looking for a place to sprawl;

next Liberace swaggers forth and swirls his cape

into Gielgud’s arms, eyes the candelabra

sinuous on a walnut Broadwood with acanthus legs

and Lee and Tony hit the keys a swinging syncopation

Francis Faye and Rusty Warren raise a bouncing song

point to an etching on the wall behind of Donatello’s David

(“the only one that matters,” mutters Francis Bacon

trapped on the banquette between Darby

and that sourpuss Jasper Johns eternally searching for Bob’s technique)

as Oscar replete in emerald glory cruises past the old battleships

Gore and James, swans around Marcel, and lights upon

Denton Welch, crabbing away from Beaton’s penetrating lens

to a safe haven behind the fortune telling table; Oscar suggests they bow out

for a boarding-house in Worthing, make the first headline of the year.

*****

Herbert List whispers in the ear of the clairvoyant,

“Liebling, do come save our sloppy Francis, his polish

is starting to run,” then realises it’s Jimmy Merrill

adorned in a Romani scarf and loaded again,

staring at the crystal ball, Tarot cards, Ouija board,

waiting for the planchette to move, not seeing the happenings all around

but somehow scrying the movement of the spheres,

the grind of the tectonic plates the living don’t hear

as the heavens howl.

*****

Charles and Elsa, hands arched high,

elevate through the hall, he not quite divisible from she,

two Brits in a strange land (though back home they might be stranger)

mistaking Hollywood for happiness. Pasolini hangs back,

intimidated yes he is and fuck ’em

thinks perhaps he should be meeting poets not blobs of the silver screen

when Thom Gunn slides a mirror gaze across cotinents

a steamy captain in chaps and cap

demonstrating in his stature the success of exile;

Gielgud spills the tea with Quentin behind the hat check counter,

says, “You haven’t got a mopsy hidden down there, have you?”

only for Tom Driberg to pop up, smiling cavalierly.

*****

‘Who are we?’ Genet pokes a finger at Julien Green’s somber chest,

doubts the catholic celibacy of an American in Paris,

when Glenway Westcott claims we are but birds,

not in the English sense, no, eagles

consigned to apartments, spots Cavafy sitting on the sofa

next to poor aimless Forster (I always wished as I got older

the sexual fantasies would fade)

asks if it’s the talons or the beaks that makes them dangerous,

when finally Wystan looks up - Chester blanches - and says,

“Did you never read Christopher and me on fascism,

did you not understand that language is the key to the psyche

and having the key

is all they need.”

[*

I need to record this.

I went out for smoke, went out the front door and saw her climbing out the cab.

I went up the street and around the corner, had a couple of tokes,

walked the block to the next corner

and did not like the look of the the man walking down,

turned back, smoked substantialy

and did not expect the woman from the cab, with a huge walker

to be wandering up the block, lost.

I asked if I could help, and she said she had left her phone in the cab

and had a bad address on a slip of paper

for an African-American gentleman, older, always wears a suit and tie.

“You mean R***?” I asked. “He lives across the hall from me.”