Tight pink buds
scale a green braid
and slowly open
into translucent
lampshades, each
more exquisite
than any glass
one by Tiffany,
filtering the sun’s
harsh, hot rays
into a delicate
rose glow.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
Monthly Archives: June 2015
Portrait of a Summer Scholar
He’s yawning forward
over crossed arms and a book
at a high table,
legs and sandaled feet dangling,
breakfast dishes pushed aside,
a good-looking youth,
dark-haired and bearded,
brown eyes deeply set
in bright, clear-skinned face,
at mid-morning on a Tuesday
at the end of June;
it’s hard to be a scholar
on a summer day.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
Lost Boy
Note: I’m attaching this one as a PDF because of its complex visual arrangement.
No Joke
So these two gay dudes walk into a bar
and they meet and hit it off and kiss
and go home together and it turns
into a long-term relationship and
they get married and despite some
troubles once in a while basically
live happily ever after just like the
straight people so they get their happy
fairy-tale ending. No joke.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
The End Was Near
For J, who must remain anonymous, because I promised not to tell.
We should have know right then
it was a warning sign:
The sad-eyed bassist smiled.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
Rim Job: A Dirty Paradelle
Warning: Sexually explicit. Please do not read if you’re bothered by that.
I rip off your skimpy underpants.
I rip off your skimpy underpants
to expose the globes of your butt cheeks,
to expose the globes of your butt cheeks:
Butt cheeks’ globes expose I,
the too-skimpy underpants off of you ripping.
Palming your ass, I spread it wide.
Palming your ass, I spread it wide
to access your smooth shaved hole,
to access your smooth shaved hole:
To access asshole, I it palming
shaved smooth, spread wide you.
Face buried in your crack, I stick my tongue inside
Face buried in your crack, I stick my tongue inside,
swirling it around inside your eager boi cunt,
swirling it around inside your eager boi cunt:
Around your boi cunt, eager face buried
in crack, I stick it, swirling.
Accessing your round ass, cunt boi,
I bury my eager face in the smooth
shaved hole of your butt cheeks’ widespread crack,
exposed by skimpy underpants ripped off,
swirling my tongue to inside stick it,
swirling my tongue to inside stick it.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
Dewdrop
Like a diamond
set among green emeralds:
dewdrop in sunlight.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
Panic Attack
Panic swoops down and preys on him:
a fearsome, famished raptor
ripping apart his flesh
with razor-claws,
digging in through muscle
to devour the organ meats,
savoring his heart and brain.
This is the point at which
the nightmare is supposed to end,
but he’s been wide awake
from the beginning,
and the scenario’s stuck
in a replaying loop.
When he tries to tell others
how it works,
they always advise,
“It’s OK, calm down, it’s
only in your head.”
But that is where he lives.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
Awkward
You probably saw them at the Pride festival,
three teenage friends walking around together,
two of them in regular summer street clothes—
shorts with T-shirts, tanks tops, flip-flops,
the third, blond and skinny, in little red trunks, but
then later on, with afternoon waning toward evening
and the crowd thinning out, a second one of them
has stripped down to briefs, but having shed his clothes,
doesn’t quite know what to do with them,
so he stands there holding them in a bundle
under his arm, looking awkward, not because
of shyness about his near nudity, but just because
of having that wad of clothes to tote around,
you’re hoping that he’ll say what the fuck
and just toss them into the first trash barrel he says
and scamper freely off, but of course, he won’t;
he’ll just juggle the bundle around all evening.
And you realize that most of us act a bit like that;
we can tug off our inhibitions or emotional baggage
or whatever superficial stuff we need to let go of,
but having taken them off, still carry them everywhere.
Copyright 2015
T/ Allen Culpepper
Wine Merchant
In the market stall,
he sits on a stool,
wearing a red plaid shirt,
trucker cap, and blue shorts,
hawking locally made wines,
extolling this and that one,
a cut young man with eyes like wells—
if he leaned back against a wall,
you could jump in them and dive down
to another hemisphere’s dawn—
and a handsome face adorned
with blond scruff—adored wine-god
of a more recent vintage—
and from this point of vantage,
I’d say that what he pours
I’d drink and ask for more.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
Poetry When It Comes 