Celebrate Nation Poetry Month with GLBTQ Poems... by our Gender Queer Friend, Lucy! And a Queer Poetry Roundup!

So if you've been following our video series Gender 101, you're familiar with Lucy (also known as Benji, pictured above.) In honor of National Poetry month, ze's kindly agreed to share two poems with me so I could share them with you.

So today, instead of a video discussion with Benji, we have some poetry written by Benji:

The Law of Conservation of Emotion

I am an artist, right?

I write these things and they are art

I have decreed that they be art, and so they shall stay


I swipe the beauty of the October leaves, not given to me

or made by me, and this too becomes art

I take the images dispersed in my brain, originally

chemicals in my veins, and I become a genius

I have never created new matter. Nature

was inspired, and created those leaves, and I take their

dying and create something new, and you take this paper

and continue the assembly line

Perhaps the beauty I absorb today will end up in a farm

in Iowa. Perchance the sadness I diffuse will be one

step in the funeral march of my great-granddaughter.


Yet there’s this passion for redirecting the route of emotions

leaving one's mark on them. That is my art.

and

Literate

I hereby enter the ranks of writers

too important for mere paper

who scrawl lines more important than literature

on the bathroom stalls

we are all nameless, except those initials bordered by hearts

set free to be

-Anonymous

We state our right-or-wrong ideas

for all to judge

but will never hear the criticism

of those not bold enough

to add their own rebuttals

and enter our ranks

our ‘meeting of the minds’

Thanks, Lucy!


And because the month has flown by and we haven't gotten to as much new GLBTQ Teen poetry as I'd planned, here are links to some of my favorite queer poems. Enjoy!





Sappho! Lesbian Poet of Ancient Fame


Rumi -

My Blog's very first "Great Queer Poem"

and

Three More Amazing poems by Rumi

and

More "essential" Rumi!





Quentin Crisp's World War Two Gay Experiences in London: Poetry where you don't expect it!





I Love Gay Poetry! Walt Whitman's "We Two boys Together Clinging" From Calamus

and

Celebrate Gay Poetry! Walt Whitman's "Calamus"

and

Walt Whitman Uncensored! His early Gay experience and the Poem through which it sang through him: "Once I pass'd Through A Populous City"




SHAKESPEARE: The Bisexual Poet and his Two Loves!



Celebrate Gay Poetry! Dennis Cooper's "James Kelly"



Poems can be Laser-like, cutting to the core: Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet"




Celebrate Ancient Epic Gay Poetry! Homer's "The Iliad"




GAY POETRY IS ALIVE! Steven Reigns' "Joe!"

and his poem "Inheritance"




Lord Byron's Love Poems to John Edleston




Muhammed Shams ud-din Hafiz, Drunk with Pleasure



And some more:

A Gay Joke for National Poetry Month



Celebrate Gay Poetry! Robert Friend's "Shirts"


A Gay Pocahontas? A Beautiful Native American Man IS a Poem in Theodore Winthrop's "John Brent!"


CELEBRATING YOUR POEMS! "For Him, Disappearing Before Dawn" by j.e. robinson


YOUR favorite Queer Poems: Mark Doty's "TIARA" and CP Cavafy's "THE GOD ABANDONS ANTONY"


Maurice Kenny (Mohawk)'s Poem on the role of Gay men in Native American tribal life and history.


Celebrate Bisexual Poetry! Rumi's "The King and The Handmaiden and The Doctor"


Celebrate Lesbian Poetry! Paula Gunn Allen's "Some Like Indians Endure"


Jacqueline Lapidus' breath-taking Lesbian poem, "Athens"


Celebrate Transgender Poetry! Aaron Shurin's "Woman on Fire"

Gloria Anzaldúa's "La Prieta" - A Bisexual Poem that blew me away!


Lesbian Teen Poetry: Sarah Laurenson's "First Love" and "How Bare My Soul" - Poetry Across Time

Transgender Poetry 2010: Alex Davis is "Man of The Year"

And of course, some Langston Hughes.

So much queer poetry to celebrate!


Namaste,
Lee