from the open window.
The carillon sounds a tinny quarter.
The sun burned
Jim's newly exposed buns.
The wind puffed
Mary's towels.
Herb, Jr, and Bill
slept in separate shade.
Even 10 pounds of
old pasteboard boxes
could not warm him
when the wind sneaked
through his drier bushes
in Kowloon Park.
The humble are not so; but are free,
like leaves which the wind drives everywhere.
Therefore, the humble shall not sit to be judged,
nor shall the gentle join the congregation of the
proud.
I have trampled catacombs in windy darkness.
2. Yoo-hoo! Hi There!
Hello, darling! I haven't seen you lately.
How are the little wife and kiddies?
He's the one who always wore paisley drawers
and once forgot and left a pack of his wife's
birth control pills, as if I needed them!
Hi there! Yoo-hoo!
Who does this other Mr. Big think he's fooling
dashing into Gimbel's as if he hadn't seen?
Hi there, Father Davis. We haven't seen you lately.
I don't think he ever did like the way I genuflect.
Hi there! Yoo-hoo! Hi there! Yoo-hoo!
Don't you want to march in my parade?
3. Five Dollars
drinking coffee, marking papers. It was 1974 or 75.
Most tables around me were occupied.
A student I did not know came by
and whispered hoarsely in my ear, "Faggot!"
I replied loudly: "Five dollars?!
I wouldn't do that for five thousand dollars!"
He started to reply but everyone laughed at him.
Knowing anything he said could make it worse,
he skulked away.
4. Tired and horny
Praise Goddess for GAYnet,
My mascara's running.
Queer poet Louie Crew Clay 79½, an Alabama native and an emeritus professor at Rutgers, lives in East Orange, NJ, with his husband Ernest Clay. Editors have published 2,629 of Louie Clay's poems and essays, including Letters from Samaria: The Prose and Poetry of Louie Crew Clay, NYC: Seabury Press, November 2015. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Crew.
The University of Michigan collects Clay’s papers.
