THE SHALLOW DEEP END by Dennis Doph

Here I am
Poised on the edge of the diving board
Seeing
Slick sludge-filled water of life beneath me
Watching
Panicky men and women with brains
Something resembling brains
Dogpaddling
their way to the shallow deep end
of the pool

Olympia Snowe pretending
she has been elected President
Protecting her usused Greek twat
From the twat-obsessed
Pretending Maine has ever produced
anything more of substance
than a couple of cookbooks

Joe Lieberman pretending
he has been elected President
When many of us out there
in the Real World
Abjured
the Gore-Lieberman ticket
because Joe Lieberman
was such an asshole

The Ghost of Michael Jackson
pretending
He was a world class artist
When he was really
just another baby-prick obsessed
child molester

The whole Karzai family
there in Afghanistan
Whatever Afghanistan is
A construct of British occupying forces
back in the Days of Glory
at the Khyber Pass Taking
CIA money by the handsful
So they can pretend
Afghanistan
Is really a place and the Afghan People
are really a people

Obama
Feverishly resisting his cocoon of estrogen
His wife his two daughters his feisty
mother-in-law
Running out
To play sports sports sports
Who knew
We could have one President so brain dead
never hip to anything but sports
Another President so smart
smothered in estrogen Never hip
to anything except sports
Too bad the healthcare debate
isn't about baskets scored

Tarentino
Lavishing the combined technology
of top of the line motion pictures
On his dick-obsessed cartoons
Bringing the Jew Bear
out of his cave with his baseball bat
Sports again
but with human heads

Sarah Palin
Newt Gingrich
Debating the essence of conservatism
Deciding the fate
of an obscure congressional district
in the wilds of Upper New York
by the intensity of their hubris
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzippppppppppp
That is Sarah unzipping
her Bristol Bay wetsuit
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzippppppp
That is Newt unzipping
his perfectly pressed flannels
groping
for the forgotten stump of manhood
behind his zipper
Forgetting
This is 2009 not 1994
Glory years of Conservatism
in the crapper

The Heenie Family
sending
Their pathetic aluminum balloon
into the paltry heavens of Colorado
Hiding the Falcon Brat in the attic
Andy Warhol was right
Fifteen minutes of fame was too good
for this fame-obsessed bunch
of trailer trash

All over America
45,000 people dying for lack
of healthcare While Olympia Snowe
and Joe Lieberman hold
a pissing contest
on the lawn of the Casa Blanca
Olympia has the biggest dick

Obama
Inside cringing waiting
for Michelle to whip out hers

The Shallow Deep End of the Pool.
Too many sharks spoil the broth
Pass the oyster crackers

UNTIDY by Dennis Doph

because why? 37

Whilst cleaning out my cultural Augean stabes
Find myself considering these husky babes
Whose talents and whose pipes informed my lot
Since I was just a tiny touselled tot
And in the company of WAACS and WAVES
became a star
Propping up each untidy Lesbian bar
Not for the sake of having unlikely kicks
But so my Aunt could pick up some new tricks

Early in life I found myself totally sold
By the thespic talent of one Hermione Gingold
Knowing she'd by knights and bluebloods
been frequently showered
With praises; and a few roles of Noel Coward
Fell to her velvety dulcet ear
But no woman ever made a punk boy feel more queer
Than the epochal eventful day
When (to the words of Sondheim) I heard her say
Untidy; what's become of 'em? Some of 'em
Hardly pay their shoddy way

Then I harked back to events both profound
and silly
When my Aunt introduced me to her fave
Bea Lillie
No lyric could be a more emphatic hipness screener
Than the pungent phrases of Piccolo Marina.
Saw in one of her few star movie turns
A brassy performance which forever burns
In the memory of this impressionable tot
Burning in my perfervid brain and like as not
Nothing could qualify for unremitting
trash removal
Than her campy performance in On Approval.
But in my lexicon nothing comes off as
anything but cute
Than the moment in Modern Millie when she
turns to James Fox and queries:
"Frrrrrrrrrrrrrruit?"

Then as a very young child I watched
my lesbo Aunt go through tears of woe
Upon the cancelling of something called
the Big Show
The target of Aunt Doris' maundering and rue
Was the pussy-flashin' actriz named Tallu
Nothing more compromising could ever
have been said
Than Meredith Willson's weekly comeback:
Yes, SIR, Miss Bankhead!
Or more bestir a nascent faggot's monkey glands
Than Tallu's deep-dish rendering of
Time On My Hands
Many were wondering when this butch bitch
might release her clutch
Or whether anyone on earth could possibly be more
butch

The King and I debuted one fateful Fifties day
As if Rodgers and Hammerstein might have
something more significant to say
But my lesbo-oriented sap rose up in torrents
Exposed to the actriz known as Gertrude Lawrence
Even though she was a somewhat sallow
unappetizing bitch
Knew this famous filly could seldom stay on pitch
But since she had been temptress to too many
famous men
For her, Noel Coward had written
I"ll See You Again
Then, like a gauntlet thrown into all our faces
like a harsh "I'll show you"
She butchly intoned the verses of
Getting to Know You
But the lesbo community had their final say
when they revealed she was the main squeeze
of Daphne du Maurier

No butch chick put a bigger crimp
in my tot muscle
Than the low-toned Hollywood actriz
Rosalind Russell
No one more capable of spawning
verve and vimmin'
Than her action-packed Goddard-slapping
performance in the Women
But the vocal perf that turned Roz from beige
to darkest brown
Was her turn in Lenny Bernstein's
Wonderful Town
And what made this wench turn a permanent
shade of tan
Is her rendition of
A Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man
Later, when spouse Lance Brisson caused
the Merm to shoo it
From the lead in Gypsy, we all had to admit
Roz blew it

No one was a more accomplished
Commedia-dell-arter
Than the dusky diva known as Betty Carter
Though divas like O'Day and Sarah were known
for splitting their infinites
No one else could stretch out
I'll Never See Maggie Alone to six minutes
And in the presence of that other butch
diva Carmen McRae
Betty and Carmen would have more than the final say
Though what they sang seemed to be such a lark
There's only one word to use for this combo:
DARK

Of course most of these divas had one main
precursor
The operetta-trained Butchesse named
Mabel Mercer
No Butchesse could muster up
more insouciant pleadins
Than Mabel singing Alec Wilder's rueful
Did You Ever Cross Over from Sneadin's?
But Mabel was always quite prepared
to play the Man
For delerious delicious Lynn Fontanne

In all this world there has never been a Diva
more of a reality-strainer
Than the blond krautische temptress
known as Marlene
Even though I saw the glitter in her golden
curly hair
Knew a fag designer had conspired to put it there
When she scooped low to examine
The Boys in the Back Room
Knew this deep-voiced yodeler had flown in
on the nearest broom
But what delights me in each and every one
of her performance
Is the lesbian obviousness which almost
amounts to enormance
Especially in Blond Venus when Marlene
finally displays her shape
By peeling off the costume of an ape

No endangered female specie ever made me
feel more cheery
Than tiny-voiced cabaret songstress
Blossom Dearie
No one "on the nose" could ever be more
positively true
Than her rendition of
Rhode Island Is Famous for You
But what she did more than anything
to spill the beans
Is insisting on doing her act in oversized
Levi's 501s jeans

The woman who could pull me right out
of my chair
Like the dusky songstress yclept
Josephine Bakhair
The hair Parisians saw -- ruddy as Albanian
--sturdy as Rus
Was the thick lez-heart-pounding fur
of her St Louis puss
She warmed up and warmed over both
my hot potatoes
With her rendition of
Mister, Don't Touch Me Tomatoes

What I realized before I graduated
from my tricycle to Schwinn bikes
Is that all these ladies were unquestionably
Dykes

SOMETHING DEPRAVED by Dennis Doph

because why? 36

Well,
I've read the works of sly twisted Nathanael West
Wondering which of his fucked-up fantasies
I liked best
Immersed myself in the luscious music of Erich
Wolfgang Korngold
Amazed that as a boy of ten he could be so adult
and bold
Dragged myself off to see the Baader-Meinhof Complex
Knowing German cinema always enhances sex
Embraced the adorable silliness of Wheeler & Woolsey
on TCM
Realizing there has never been another pair
Nelly as them
Rolled around in the butchness of the femme
known as Madam Spivy
Lusted after watching Ann Landers portrayed
by Judith Ivey
Congratulated myself getting off one after another
of my snide retorts
Ignoring the whole Wonderful Wide World of Sports
Shaved my suddenly white beard just so
not neglecting the adorable tuft below
the lower lip
Pausing to wipe the always regular flow of sperm
from my penis' equally adorable tip
Calculating how much lube it will take to replace
my dependency on Crisco
Feverishly anticipating that long delayed sex event
at San Francisco
And to liberate myself from the elitist intellectual world
in which I've been self-enslaved
I now find myself deliciously planning something
dark and depraved

I've smeared some Garnier Ultra-Lift on my skin
of alabaster
Got a bone hard as a rock for that MSNBC host
who used to be a sportscaster
Casting about feverishly to Australia Brazil and Chile
for the moral support of my cyberfriends
Watching any film with adorable Emile Hirsch
whose boy chest gives me the bends
Knowing casually my man extension still can manifest
a monumental plinth
Jerking off to hairy Sergi Lopez the villain
in Pan's Labyrinth
Knowing what combination of flesh and fur
it takes to make me super hard
Remembering my first enormous boy erection
watching Bill Holden in Sunset Boulevard
Gene Kelly was athletic and Astaire was quite complex
But for boy dancers give me hot Gene Nelson
who combined it all with fur and sex
As a viable sexual combatant I tend to be
some kind of disgrace
But there's nothing more that I would love
than to have some hairy stud sit on my face
So as I go trolling off to the Pleasure Palace
intent and semi engorged
I enjoy the sixtysomething entity I seem
to have irreverently forged
As I unzip my Levi's 501s for you boy
as you slither in the door
Contemplate the man extension I have for you boy
before your knees hit the floor
I have no trouble contemplating three generations
of male hearts which I've enslaved
And now I go hustling out my cottage door
To perform something nice and something depraved.