Allen Ginsberg As A Heterosexual

"Joe Blow has decided
he will no longer be a fairy"
--Allen Ginsberg
"The Archetype Poem"

The almost Talmudic obsession with his sex--
The way his cock, normally earthworm and Euclidean
Would suddenly betray him--
The lugubrious gorilla accelerations of desire
Flaring into function at even the most dubious erotics.
It constantly worried him, the around-the-clock fear
That some small thing--oy vey!--could usurp
His usual sangfroid.

Anything could incite him--
Set his Everestian (he thought) limb pitchforking forward
Like a demented trident:
The vaguely aphroidiasical smells of sweater-sweltering women
In crowded elevators, the tumbling triptych of magazine centerfolds
Or the tiny tissued tits of teen-aged girls.
Even the fuck-you-in-Italian gestures of undertipped waitresses
Or the pirate-squint of nearsighted librarians with
Soup-bowl-shaped Prince Valiant haircuts.

Mostly his desire is a kind of divining rod
That doesn't make sense to him 'cause he doesn't know
Where it will lead him or what he'll end up with.
It is alien. Biblical. Star-Trekkian.
Something that is both released, yet far removed,
Like the frying of distant meat.
Some days Emily Dickinson is as sexy as Mae West
And the NASDAQ is a veritable Kama Sutra.
Anything can do it--
Disengage the Old Testament emergency-brake on his libido.
Advertising. Laxatives. Baking soda. HMO's.

Shunned by his family, taxonomized as hopelessly weird
After the Karl-Malden-nosed Casanova was banned
For life from a certain Victoria's Secret in Paramus, New Jersey
(An incident resulting from sneaking one too many sniffs
Of the clean, starchy, still-smells-like-the-mall smells
Of the sherbert-colored satin panties stretched out,
Erotic cruciform, on clear plastic hangers.

He has these urges, these eyes-rolling-back-in-the-head urges,
Where the blood begins to hum in his groin
And then everything gets very quiet--
As if somebody switched off the audio-track
Of the movie which is his life
And in that stillness where
Even speech is mute and ridiculous,
Like the slow mouth-movements of tropical fish,
There is this vaguely school-boy notion
Of what sexuality actually means
That consumes his thinking,
Becomes monstrously iconic,
Like Warhol's Day-Glo Marilyn except bigger:
Marilyn Monroe as huge as a Macy's balloon
With sashaying boobs the size of Herald's Square.

Nervous, censorious,
Constantly apologizing for the total
Vagabondage of his genitals,
He sometimes wonders if life is worth the humiliation,
The restraining orders, the maternal wise-assing about blindness.
But if he is sad, it is only for a moment,
Only until his hand, creeping like a separate consciousness
Once again indulges in the Reader's Digest version
Of sexual gratification.

I am the way I am because I refuse to enter
The drunken taxi-cabs of Absolute Reality!
He yells while dancing alfresco in front of a Hell's Kitchen window.
It is hard to be normal
When it is normal to be hard! Ha ha ha!
His words, something between joy and rage,
Sexuo-liturgical, existential yawp,
The most supercalifragilistic sort of
Howl.