From Homoerotic Tanka to Barack Obama

An earlier post on homoerotic tanka has gotten some positive feedback, and some bewildered comments wondering why a poet would fear censure. I've also gotten emails telling me how 'brave' I am to post such things. Frankly, hiding behind a pen name as I do to protect myself, I'm not sure I'm that brave. Above and beyond that, that people say such things is a tacit acknowledgement that there is something frightening out there. So far, however, I have not run into any overt homophobia in the tanka world.

On the other hand, I can't say that people are comfortable about it either. My own work is indirect, so that it is not obvious to most people that I am writing 'gay tanka,' this I suspect provides the necessary insulation to protect the reader from the poem and the poet from the reader. That insulation that prevents the poems from being perceived as the poet intended is a failure of artistic integrity, even as it permits popular success. The desire to make explicit that which was invisible is why I did my one man show "Love Letters : Homoerotic Tanka of Love and Friendship" at 3 Lights Gallery last year. (Thank you, Liam!)

I think tanka has an advantage in that sexuality is not taboo; erotic relationships, including male/male ones have a long history in tanka. Saigyo wrote love poems for male friends that people blithely insist on reading as 'only' friendship, and being a monk, they probably weren't carnal--but the word used is 'koi' (erotic/passionate love), not 'ai' (spiritual, platonic love).

In translation, the word 'love' is broad enough to let us believe that a monk meant 'brotherly love,' and not something more intimate. Here I mean 'emotionally intimate' because it is impossible to know more. In Saigyo's day such 'passionate friendships' were normal among men, but such relationships cannot be acknowledged among Americans without being tainted with the perjorative gay.

I have often listened to (straight) men expressing their love for other men, usually they say, "I love him like a brother," and go on to describe the admirable qualities of their friend, and express what they are willing to do for him, but they are always careful to invoke a certain nobility in order to forestall any suspicion. Canadian men I have known, by contrast, are much more comfortable, and have even expressed a certain amount of erotic appreciation for male friends, "If I was gay, I'd do him." I can't ever recall hearing such remarks from an American man. The same is true of soldiers; the Canadian combat veterans I have known have expressed their love for an admired officer in a mixture of platonic and erotic terms. Never have I heard such a mixed response from an American combat veteran.

I think American veterans must feel such things, but with the era of Don't Ask Don't Tell, they keep a firm division between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' expressions. Looking back through history, there is a lengthy record in the West as well as the East regarding deeply emotional, intimate, and personal relationships among men, and even a certain homoeroticism, intended or not. Compare the peacock finery of an eighteen century naval officer with the more prosaic uniform of an army officer serving in Iraq. Just why was the fashion of skintight pants adopted in the early 1800s anyhow? Why on earth would an officer at sea need to advertise the shapeliness of his legs? The well bloused and pocket laden uniform of the modern soldier is far more practical. Fashion was in love with the male physique in a way it hasn't known since the invention of the business suit.

Back then it was understood that a man's physical presence was part of his leadership abilities. Virile men were better regarded than men who weren't. Today's favorite word 'sexy' in no way conveys the package of authority, sexuality, paternalism, physicality, masculinity, and charisma of 'virile.' I don't think it's a coincidence that fashion moved to provide a duller, less flamboyant, less explicit display of the male form at the same time that homosexuality was becoming more and more of an anxiety to English and American culture. The more society became aware of the attractiveness of the male form, the more it covered it up. Nowadays, the tightness of a man's pants is popularity believed to be connected with his orientation; tight pants on a man over thirty are assumed to mean he's gay. Why else would he be 'showing off his ass?'

While the assumptions inherit in such thinking are clearly prone to error, that such thinking exists illustrates the connection I'm illuminating. Awareness of and appreciation for the male form is considered inappropriate for other men; it must be mean he's gay. By such thinking, appreciating Michaelangelo's David makes a man queer. This is clearly wrong. On the other hand, for a gay male, such forms do offer an added layer of appreciation, just as Venus Rising from the Sea by Boticelli must have engendered a certain warm appreciation among straight male viewers that is not necessarily shared by female viewers. Ironically, women are allowed to look at and evaluate other women, to comment on their appearance, and gossip about who's wearing what. Men aren't. If a man comments about another man's appearance, he must be gay.

Two hundred years ago men did care about what other men wore, commented on it, and responded to it. Our last two hundred years of fashion is a peculiar anomaly in which fear of homosexuality has channeled masculinity into narrow forms of expression and truncated the ability of men to display a full range of natural human responses to other men. For thousands of years societies have thrived and prospered with a much broader range of expression for men; modern men, especially British and American men, are the victims of a gender discrimination that subjects a man to being labeled 'queer' if he steps outside of it.

If he wants to be an elementary school teacher, he's suspect. If he wants to be a nurse, he must not be a real man. If he wants to write poetry, he must be effeminate. If he wants to be a 'real man,' he has to be able to mete out violence and crack jokes while doing it. No remorse, either. Remorse is for sissies. Football player, soldier, policeman, and if he hasn't got the physique to do truly manly things, he better use is brain as a substitute and mete out financial violence instead instead. Taking advantage of ones power (physical, financial, political) to exploit other people and enrich oneself is the American ideal of manhood.

It's pretty obvious what's wrong with such thinking, but only now has public disgust manifested itself in the mantra of 'change we can believe in.' It remains to be seen if Obama can live up to the towering expectations, but an examination of his person offers some clues. For one thing, he's an attractive man, as many people have noticed. George W. Bush was a fit man who kept up an exercise plan, but looking at a picture of Bush did not prompt one to say, "He's a sexy old guy." (If you're under twenty, you may not believe that it is possible to be sexy and old, but there are in fact sexy old guys. Sean Connery. Chuck Norris. Kirk Douglas. Even grey-haired George Clooney, incredibly ancient at 47).

Nobody has yet publicly applied the term 'sexy' to Obama, and I doubt they will. It would be.... undignified. Inadequate. Cute. Obama is a lot of things, but 'cute' isn't one of them. Obama is virile. He's got that amazing blend of looks, authority, and charisma that people have responded to for millennia. He knows it, and he dresses the part. No wonder people believe in him, he looks like a leader. He's the kind of man you can imagine commanding the quarterdeck of a British battleship at Trafalgar. (If blacks had been allowed to be officers.) Can you picture Bush standing along side the immortal Nelson at the height of British glory? No, not really.

Somehow Obama has managed to combine within himself the best parts of father, leader, fashion plate, and philosopher. He's already been lauded as 'Role Model in Chief' for young black men, who are now hitching up their pants and aspiring to something other than 'ghetto chic.' But what really excites me about Obama is whether he can inspire all men to become gentlemen. Because that's what he is, an old-fashioned gentleman. Once upon a time men aspired to be something better than a successful thug, and that meant living up to a standard that included consideration for others.

Okay, historically it meant rich white guys having paternalistic consideration for their inferiors, but I'll take condescending accommodation over legal discrimination and lynching any day. Still, although the old model of manhood had its drawbacks, it had a commitment to honor that is shamefully out of fashion today. Once upon a time, a man's word was his bond. Try telling that to Bernie Madoff. Dishonor is rampant in business today. We talk about 'ethics', but ethics aren't the same as 'honor.' 'Ethics' is something external. Ethics is something you take a class on in college. By contrast, honor is what you feel. It's who you are. To be guilty of an ethical violation means hiring a lawyer and a spin doctor. Dishonor isn't something than can be fixed with an application of money. Dishonor is forever. That's why old-fashioned gentlemen would go to any extreme avoid it, and if necessary, would fall upon their swords.

America could use some old-fashioned gentlemen in high places. And not to be sexist, women can aspire to the same standard of conduct. Vice President Miss Manners. Don't laugh, I hold Miss Manners in the highest esteem. She's an honorable woman, and while her foreign policy experience may be limited, the history of the Middle East peace process can be learned. A sense of fair play and respect for other people's dignity are innate characteristics, which, if not acquired by age 17, are not going to miraculously appear in a person once they achieve high public office.

Which brings us full circle back to homoerotic tanka. In order to get the best out of people, we have to let them be their best, whoever they are. We have to respect the full range of human expression and not constantly be monitoring people to determine if they're 'queer' or not. If it's okay to be queer, then it's okay to be a man and express whatever he happens to feel--without ambushing him with charges of homosexuality. It means opening ourselves to more fully appreciating the complexity of human interactions. It means that men must acquire more finely nuanced social skills so that they can detect and respond appropriately to a variety of interactions. It means that women and other men must come to appreciate men as something more than action heroes or buffoons.

It means that poets must be able to write about a variety of emotions and situations without having to hide behind a gender neutral pseudonym. It means that editors must be comfortable enough to publish a variety of content and treatments instead of the conventions of the genre. It means that readers must read with awareness and not make assumptions about gender, orientation, sexuality, or the nature of the relationships depicted.

In tanka we call this 'dreaming room.' The mind is not only free to roam and explore a multitude of possibilities, but it actually does so. Tanka is unique in that it requires the active participation of the reader more than any other form of literature. This is the height of a liberal education, where we understand 'liberal' in the old-fashioned sense of the word, not the politically charged media sound bite. It means having a generous mind--in poetry, in politics, in our personal lives.

I don't know if Barack Obama can live up to all our expectations. I don't know if tanka can grow into a truly open poetry. I don't know if our politicians can overcome their partisan divide. But a generous mind wishes them all well, with patience for stumbling and wrong turns, and faith that the ultimate outcome will be worthwhile.

Homoerotic Tanka

I'm pleased to have a solo show and interview at 3Lights Gallery online. Liam Wilkinson has done a lovely job as usual presenting my work. I like his conceit of the gallery exhibiting poetry as if it were art. The theme of the exhibit, homoerotic tanka, is one that I often write, but which people often fail to realize. With a gender-non-specific pen name like 'M. Kei' it leaves the poems open to interpretation with the reader filling in whatever gender suits his or her taste. Which explains why I have been mistaken for a woman online... poems addressed to male lovers are assumed to have been written by a woman.

rattlesnake love—
you gave me warning,
but I, entranced
by your desert heart,
wouldn't heed it

(Fire Pearls, 2006)


Full well do I know
that this transient pleasure
is like foam on the sea;
Yet even so I want it
to last a thousand years

(Simply Haiku, Summer, 2006)


his burlap skin
washed by the
diamond waters,
and everywhere,
jellyfish in bloom

(Modern English Tanka, Winter, 2006)


Persian carpet,
my denim leg over
your bare one,
my book resting
against your back

(Gusts #6, 2007)

The above tanka are all homoerotic poems that have been published in various places without drawing attention to the fact that they are poems of male love. 'Persian carpet' was inspired by a Tom of Finland drawing, and when I saw it published in Gusts, I realized that I had to do something to make the context explicit if I wanted these poems to be seen as I felt them. I am grateful to Liam Wilkinson for his openness to publishing a collection of this sort.

I have searched the Internet for other gay tanka and there aren't many, and even fewer that are good. My own style is an indirect one, so that makes it difficult to write poems which are frank in their appreciation of male love and friendship. There is also the perception that gay=pornographic, that anything gay must be full of explicit homosexual sex acts. I suspect the reason why the insistence of a gay extreme for sexuality is because the line between male friendship and homoeroticism is a slim one and easily crossed. People become uncomfortable if they suspect a relationship might be perceived as 'abnormal' in some way. They justifiably object to viewers reading something into a relationship that does not exist. Therefore they exaggerate the differences between male intimacy and homosexuality.

One of the reasons why the exhibit carries the subtitle 'homoerotic tanka of love and friendship' is to acknowledge this continuum of male feelings and to permit the publishing of poetry without building a wall between friendship and sexuality. My own experience with soldiers, for example, suggests to me that the emotional intimacy that develops in men who serve together in harsh conditions is not foreign to sexuality. This is not to say that soldiers' relationships are erotic, but to acknowledge that men are emotional beings as well as physical, and that the emotional intimacy that men can develop is very powerful. Whether a man is a soldier or a lover, the capacity for emotional connection is there. Not only there, but desirable and necessary if we are to be a civilized people.

American men in particular are deeply constrained in their self-expression to the roles of bad-ass action hero and buffoon, often at the same time (especially if he is black). More desirable and finely nuanced roles -- such as father -- are hard to sustain. Contempt for men is widespread. Teenage girls walk around wearing t-shirts that say, "Boys have feelings too, but who cares?"

I do. Part of coming out gay is not only a matter of coming out with regards to one's sexual orientation, but a coming out to demand to be perceived and respected as a whole person, not just a set of genitalia driven by hormonal urges searching for a compatible set of genitalia with which to mate. I don't want to have sex with men as much as I want to be able to hold hands with a male lover and walk down the street in safety. The most important reason I use a pen name for my poetry is so that I can write what I want to write and feel reasonably safe. I want the right to be a whole person, without being stereotyped, denigrated, channeled, ignored, assaulted, and discriminated against.

~K~

Misadventures & Homoerotic Poetry

Two of my friends have passed judgment on the photograph. One says, "You're not as hideous as me," and the other says, "Handsome, in a classical 18th century style." Here I am, hours later, and I still haven't gotten all the wax off my keyboard. The lighting in that photo is candlelight. My actual purpose was to try and photograph the candles in an artistic way, thinking that if it turned out decent, I would use it as the cover for Fire Pearls. It didn't, and I won't.

I also developed a pet peeve: Software that tries to read my mind and fails. Hell, not even my own mother knows what I'm thinking! How could software outsmart my mother? And so I committed the rather embarassing faux pas of sending some homoerotic poetry to a tanka e-list that I meant to send to a different recipient. *BLUSH* Fortunately, I have not figured out how to competently write truly hot tanka, so the poems were relatively tame. As opposed to my imagination which isn't tame at all!

Long, long ago, a wise old leatherman taught me the secret of sexuality. He pointed to his head and said, "If you're not turned on up here," he pointed to his lower head, "It doesn't matter what's going on down here." Amen, brother. The brain is the only sex organ.

Having embarassed myself by posting six homoerotic tanka where others could read, I figured I might as well post them here, too. Better to be hanged as a wolf than a sheep, I always say. A word of warning, although tanka are often autobiographical, not all of these are. Some of them are complete fiction, but all of them half true.

a man
with tangled hair
is a rare thing, but
that is because
I am a rare lover


After we make love,
I spend the night staring
at the mountain of his shoulder
and the darkness of his skin,
hating his wife.


Male colors...
yellow and brown,
legs and arms entwined,
and the rumble of his sleep
through the winter’s night.


I show him how much
I love and desire him --
then he goes home to her.
I want to hammer nails
through both of them.


He answers, “Hello?”
and I nearly drop the phone
at the sexy sound of his baritone.
Would it be so wrong
to seduce my friend’s husband?


Sneak up dancer,
deer toes around your ankles,
hairpipes around your throat,
copper skin flashing,
you dance the Red Road.

NB. 'Sneak Up Dance,' one of the oldest traditional Native American dances.


An admirable man, the captain,
able, honorable, and reliable --
handsome, too,
although that doesn’t matter
to the wind.


I'm also exceptionally bored this evening, which is something you will rarely hear me admit. In my opinion, bored people are boring people. I really don't see how anyone with a brain could ever be bored. Nothing to do? Use your head! Therefore, in my search for socialization and amusement, I decided to update my profile and go blog reading. Now I have a new pet peeve: People who create blogs, post once, and disappear. Collateral peeve: Blog software that claims a person has made 'recent' posts to their blog when they haven't posted since 2004. Exactly what is blogspot's definition of 'recent?'

I also noticed that people look at my profile, but they don't post comments. This must mean I have either overawed them with my brilliance, or they decided cleaning the catbox was more fun. Talk to me, people! It's a blog! Use the comment feature!

Just don't spam me with ads for porn, diploma mills, stock of questionable merits, Viagra, cures for hair loss, or any other junk. My imagination is sexier than your porn, I already have my diploma, I'm too damned poor to buy stock, I don't need Viagra, I have a full head of hair, and I have a lifetime supply of junk. In short, whatever you're selling, I don't need it.