At Dawning

AT DAWNING (I LOVE YOU) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8weNcLAG5U

Music and lyrics by Charles Wakefield Cadman

When the dawn flames in the sky I love you;
When the birdlings wake and cry, I love you;

When the swaying blades of corn
Whisper soft at breaking morn,

Love anew to me is born,
I love you, I love you.

Dawn and dew proclaim my dream, I love you;
Chant the birds one thrilling theme, I love you;

All the sounds of morning meet,
Break in yearning at your feet.

Come and answer, come, my sweet,
I love you, I love you.

Vernon Sheffield in Emporia

The Boy in the Bell Jar

I met Vernon one day—

In the old Science Building

Going up the staircase

It was my Ritual—

To view the Fetus Boy

In the display cabinet

There he was asleep—

In his Jar of Formaldehyde

But his eyes were open

Looking at me—

From outta History

For how many years?

I would stand there—

Trying to talk with him

Sharing my thoughts

Long before I read—

Sylvia Plath’s “Bell Jar”

The kid read my beads

Vernon Sheffield

Vernon’s office was—

On the same floor next

To the Boy in Jar

He noticed me—

Maybe felt sorry for me

Took me under his wing

He taught Music then—

Mathematics when the

Department changed

Music for him should—

Be taught only by men

He was tres Misogynist

Why I don’t know—

But he enjoyed young

Men very much instead

And so he ended up—

Teaching Mathematics

Instead there at KSTC

Emporia Evenings

We went for long walks—

In the long summer evenings

Emporia different back then

The Eisenhower Fifties—

So very calm and naïve

After the Second World War

My parents were divorced—

Vernon became my guide

My gay Fairy Godmother

I was like Judy Garland—

Stuck there in Kansas & he

Was Glenda my Good Witch

He lived west of campus—

In a small apartment with

A sleek black grand piano

He’d play Mozart for me—

Minuets and lovely ditties

He’d make up in his mind

Gothic Emporia

There’s nothing more—

Gothic than Emporia

During the winter

The tall stark Elms—

Brooding up & down

The dismal streets

My gothic house—

On Constitution was

Really no different

Inherited from my—

Gone grandparents

Now reclusive mine

The sleek art deco—

Senate Apartments

Now a Frat House

The big homes—

Once historic now

A ghetto slum

Sunken Garden

The Fountain—

Once a rendezvous

For illicit moments

Tennessee Williams—

Summer and Smoke

Lonely interludes

Young male students—

Lonely & far from home

Blowjobs in the bushes

During the summer—

A Garden of Eden for

Me down on my knees

During winter though—

Slim Pickings with stark

Plumb Hall looking grim

That’s when my mentor—

Vernon Sheffield played

Piano sonatas for me

THE PIANIST 

_______________

THE PIANIST

VERNON SHEFFIELD 

CHOPIN SONATAS

VERNON’S OBITUARY

HIS DIZZY LIFE

CLOSET CASE

KANSAS LOVE

AUTOBIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA

___________

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-XhROuRDBY

THE PIANIST

“But to confess”
—Philip Larkin
CONTINUING TO LIVE
________

Continuing to live—
In order to get necessities
Teaching, music lessons

It’s nearly always a—
Losing proposition, going
Without, but it varies
______

Loss of interest, hair—
Not like a game of poker
More like chess, my dears

And once you’ve walked—
The length of your life…
Checkmate by the Queen
_________

Music and nothing else—
Existed for me, Chopin
At the top of my List

What’s the profit tho?—
A lonely apartment 
West of the campus

VERNON SHEFFIELD 

“And what most appalls”
—Philip Larkin, TOPS
_______________________

Vernon Sheffield was a—
Talented pianist and organist
Like so many gay men are

Why he chose to live there—
And teach at our little Kansas
College town is a mystery to me
____________

There in the center of the—
Republican Red State Rat Hole
Surrounded by hostile Heteros

Although it wasn’t so bad—
I suppose back then in the
Calm days of Eisenhower Era
___________

I could feel the calmness—
Back there in the stacks of
The William Allen White Library

Although the Witch Hunts—
And gay-bating were just
Around the postwar corner
_________

How does a gay man—
Teaching at KSTC there in
A little Kansas town survive?

How did a gay man—
Live each day existing in
A Santa Fe Cow-Town then?

CHOPIN SONATAS

“To fail (transitive 
and intransitive)”
—Philip Larkin
SUCCESS STORY
______________

It wasn’t that I played—
Chopin sonatas badly in
The Plumb Hall auditorium

I mean that something—
Else was missing, somewhat
Disappointing me, my dears
___________

In my case ”to do” what—
I wanted can be traced back 
To the Latin “to deceive”

My ambition to be a Pianist—
Made me undertake rigidly
Forswearing the rich game

VERNON’S OBITUARY

“On that green evening
when our death begins”
—Philip Larkin
CONTINUING TO LIVE
_________

Whatever they’ll say—
Will be hardly satisfying
Since it only applies to me

“One man once”—
And then he finally died
As if dying was a big deal
_________

Nothing written about—
My other gay half-identity 
Blind to all my misbehaving

Clean it up a little bit—
The GAZETTE Editor says
None of that in our Rag!!!
__________

But you’ll hear a curious—
Counter-whispering dodging
The dirty faggy dealings

Even my pretence was—
So-so, pretending to be who
I wasn’t like all the others

HIS DIZZY LIFE

“Tops heel and yaw,
sent newly spinning”
—Philip Larkin, TOPS
________________

Like me they squirm—
Spinning across the floor 
For everyone’s enjoyment

So poised, erect, proud—
At the beginning when
A top is doing its thing
______________

But then it slowly begins—
To falter, its paces begin
To slow down & falter

Weaving hopelessly—
Tired, beginning to wobble
Then reeling, sprawling
__________

But what’s most appalling—
Is that tiny last shiver
As they lose their balance

Letting everybody know—
Without a doubt that the
Top is starting to die…

CLOSET CASE

“Since the majority of me
rejects the majority of you”
—Philip Larkin, Unpublished
_______________

Sure of themselves—
Most of our small Emporia
Community commune on

Sundays, assured that—
They’re disinfected from 
Any minority disfigurements
_____________

With silence so elegant—
Shunning unshared friends
And those unwalked ways

That’s why I travel up—
To Topeka to a gay bar
I know only too well
_____________

The Kansas City Baths—
Where unopposed at last
I can renew myself somewhat

But even then there’s the—
Usual cancelled promises…
I never seem to learn

KANSAS LOVE

“Who called 
love conquering?”
—Philip Larkin, 
Unpublished
________________

Hardly, my dears—
Gay Love is about as
Conquering as warm spit

As E. M. Forster once—
Said to J. R. Ackerley  
Concerning gay love
_________

“Really, my dear—
You must stop searching
In coal mines for diamonds!”

The silent minority—
Somewhat unopposed at
Last I suppose will find
____________

That love is a rather—
Crippling thing that 
Cancels our promises

Concerned with only—
One thing as the dire
Cloak of dark descends

AUTOBIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA

“And here I am, the 
center of all beauty! 
writing these poems!
Imagine!”—Frank O’Hara
Autobiographia Literaria
______________

They say that beauty—
Is in the eye of the 
Beholder, don’t they?

It seems that way—
To me, especially the
Older I get, my dears
_____________

To celebrate maturity—
Vernon Sheffield gave
Yearly Emporia recitals

Then He & I would have—
Cocktails in his apartment 
There west of campus

BEFORE

THE LONG HOT SUMMER 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQKEmw8YUg

TimeSlip moment again, my dears—
Thirty years ago one of my fav songs 
In the world entered the charts

Forever evoking thoughts of sultry—
Beautiful summery Kansas weather so
Tres swelteringly nude as I recall
__________

The Style Council managed what—
Most "post-punk projects" did not way
Back then: a homoerotic zeitgeist 

Like wildly popular Brideshead Revisited—
The first time that I ever found the stoic
British grim like most Emporians SEXY

AFTER

LONG HOT SUMMER 

—The Style Council

“I play out my role
Why, I've even been out walking
They tell me that it helps
But I know when Im beaten
All those lonely films
And all those lonely parties
But now the feeling is off-screen
And the tears for real not acted, anymore

I'm all mixed up inside
I want to run but I can't hide
And however much we try
We can't escape the truth and the fact is

Don't matter what I do
It don't matter what I do
Don't matter what I do
Don't matter what I do
Don't matter what I do
Cause I end up hurting you

One more covered sigh
And one more glance you know means goodbye
Cant you see thats why
Were dashing ourselves against the rocks of a lifetime

(In my mind different voices call)
What once was pleasure nows pain for us all
(In my heart only shadows fall)
I once stood proud now I feel so small
(I dont know whether to laugh or cry)
The long hot summer just passed me by.

Shitty Diddie Diddie De Pop!!!
Shitty Diddie Diddie De Pop!!!
Shitty Diddie Diddie De Pop!!!

David Leiker

PIANO IN A WHEATFIELD 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTqbTP5qy7k 

“Returning home is like that.
The future gets left behind, 
a piano dumped on a stark
prairie.”—Robert Rebein
Dragging Wyatt Earp: A 
Personal History of Dodge City
________________

It’s out there somewhere—
lost a huge gold wheat-field

With the Chevy pickup—
it’s all gone, ruins in the wind
___________________

The windmill, the big red barn—
the farmhouse and grainery

All you can hear is the—
piano strings whispering

FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH BLOWJOB

“Panting with trousers ripped,
light wallets, and lips bleeding”
—Philip Larkin, WHATEVER HAPPENED?
_________________

Forgive me, Almighty Lord—
Lord of the High Heavens plus
The little Dingbat Town of Emporia

I simply couldn’t help myself—
I confess I was a Sinner thru & thru
Down there during Sunday School
__________________

Michael Foster was such a wild—
Seminal Strong City Kid who had
My number and got me but good

Down there in the myrrh-scented—
Holy basement of the strange but
Beautiful First Christian Church
______________

Mike my first sacrilegious BJ—
Fated from Heaven Fellatio Shot
From the Gods above down below

I got him good in the stairwell—
Leading down into the hallowed
Sunday School Basement below
_____________

He was incorrigibly uncouth—
Ditched by his parents & dumped
On his aging Strong City grandparents

Maybe that’s why he was so very—
How should I say exquisitely tres
Smarmy about Sunday School me
_________

What can I say to possibly convince—
You of my complete & utter Innocence
Seduced by such Teenage Insolence

All it took was one amazed look—
At his simply huge ten inch boner
And I knew surely I’d been saved!!!