Four poems


twist and shout

the muscles at the back of his neck
were so sexy they were practically like
his genitalia. i watched him
drying off from his shower.
my roommate. a swimmer on
the college swim team.
a sweet sexy guy.
we were both 19.
we were both good-looking,
him better than me, but
still, both.
now, at the age of 58,
looking back, and
back, i understand
that i was gay,
and wanted to be
straight. and that,
nonetheless,
i was in love
with him:
college swim team
swimmer with a great
body and wonderful
smile
and that, he,
no doubt, was straight.
there was nothing
he could do about
being so sexy,
though, nothing
he could do about
my secret lust
for him.
sometimes stuff
happened.  like
when we went camping
together, we rolled
together for warmth
on cold winter nights,
the snow pelting the
outside of the tent,
us huddled together
for comfort,
and warmth, our
voices low and
soft, seduction
could have been
in the air,
sex pumping
heart pumping
his voice deep
my voice not
as deep, together,
our two voices,
a gently throaty
rumble as
the snow fell
and fell
and fell.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem also appears in my book Gorilla Architecture, published by Interior Noise Press in 2011.)


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green

cute boys who paint pictures with their dicks
are the bee's knees. cute boys who dip
the tips of their big dicks into paint,
and then paint pictures with their dicks,
are god's gift to the universe.
these cute boys work with big canvases,
mounted low on the easel.
their days are spent copious, surrounded
by beauty, enveloped in the scent
of their oily pubic hair.
sometimes these cute boys get so
excited while they are painting, their
dicks get so stiff, that their
hot freshly-spurted cum gets
mixed in with the paint on their
canvases, and dries there,
along with the paint. after
a day spent painting with
their dicks, the cute boys
who paint paintings with
their dicks settle into
a nice sudsy bath, and
try to get their hardworking
dicks clean, but, truth be
told, their dicks are
never really clean ever
again, but retain the
sheen, the tinge,
of rampant creativity.
as they get older,
these dyed-dick
boys never think of
themselves as tainted, or dirty,
but just, perhaps,
as gently used.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem also appears in my book Be Kind to Strangers, published by BareBackPress in 2015.)



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short poem

Chris pine

  you're mighty fine.


--Carl Miller Daniels (Excerpt from my book Sedimentary Iguana-Land, published by BareBackPress in April, 2017.)

===================================

bubbles

when my ship set sail into the wilderness
of mysterious fishes and odd critters of the saline nation,
hardly anyone would talk to me.
i was too eager. too ready to show off my
keen biological knowledge and insightful
ways of observing fascinating zoological marine phenomena.
the other summer interns, were
much more relaxed about their job.
it was, for them, just a summer job,
not the best, not the worst,
and kind of an opportunity for
them to hang out with each
other and enjoy after-hours beer
and cards and talk.  i didn't
even drink back then. thought
it would be bad for me. also, i
was just kind of a naive goody-two-shoes.
i was just 19, an eager-beaver college sophomore,
deliriously happy with having a real
job in my chosen field: biology.
wow. and MARINE biology at
that. specialization!
wow! i thought this was all pretty dern great.
out on the water on a marine biology
research ship, watching
the giant net slide under the
surface of the water,
knowing it was gliding and banging along
the bottom, and watching
its contents get dumped onto
the sorting table: hundreds
of fish, sometimes thousands,
all different shapes, sizes,
and colors. and pretty soon
i knew the names of all of them,
common name, scientific name,
family, and genus, and species.
oddly enough, my growing knowledge
and quick mastery of fish identification skills
did not endear me to the other
summer interns. in their eyes,
i was even more "geeky," more
of a "hotdog," a downright
"nerd."
ah well, i was having fun
anyway,
and later, when i did get
a bit more relaxed, and
was having an actual
laid-back conversation with
the chief scientist on the
ship, a tall skinny 30ish
guy with a sexy demeanor and
sweet sad eyes,
just him and me talking,
mostly about science stuff,
measuring this, identifying
that. there was
nobody else around.
he drank beer after beer.
we talked some more, and, then,
all of a sudden,
he told me something that surprised
me, something that i've always
remembered. this is what he said.
he said, "there are really only two
things i like about being alive,"
he said, as he sucked on a
can of beer.
"just two things i like:
being drunk. and
being asleep. when i'm not
drunk, i want to be
asleep. when i'm not
asleep, i want to be
drunk.
those are really the only
two things i can stand
about being alive."
there was a moment
of awkward silence.
it was
late, nearly midnight,
the surface of the
sea slick
and cold
and
black.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem also appears in my book Saline, published by Interior Noise Press in 2014.)