Gay Poetry Quotes & Sayings

The notion of the measuring scale is critical in Hindu thought. The value of an object depends on the scale being followed. And since all scales are man-made, all values are artificial. Thus all opinions ultimately are delusions, based on man-made measuring scales. — Devdutt Pattanaik

If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere, and not have to to say to one of them, 'No, you stay home tonight, you won't be welcome,' because I'm going to an all-white party where I can be gay, but not Black. Or I'm going to a Black poetry reading, and half the poets are anti-homosexual or thousands of situations where something of what I am cannot come with me. The day all the different parts of me can come along, we would have what I would call a revolution. — Pat Parker

I'm omnivorous in my tastes, fiction and non-fiction, always several books on the go, though I'll read a novel in a day or two. — O.R. Melling

Sitting on couch, lying legs apart
Dark dirty naked. Smiling at me,
Wicked lazy lusty eyes. I moaned,
When saw movement inside his silent,
The thick forest of pubic hair. — Delicious David

Gay James: Well, why don't you stop playing games and give us a little of your private self?
Straight James: Kind of impossible, don't you think? As soon as I share it, it becomes public. — James Franco

New York has the gay marriage now," Camilla said. "You should propose. Make things legal." "I don't think Garrett is interested in settling down, Aunt Camilla." "He's had his fun," Nonna said. "Now it's time to put a leash on him. That will settle him right down. I was just as wild before your Grandpa Frank proposed. Had some idea I was going to run off to Argentina and write poetry or maybe marry Tommy Dellacroce and be a mafia princess, but Frank proposed first. — Irene Preston

To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary. — Walter Benjamin

Religiously, we longed for the lively life in Christ, but we did not fully see that we were equally longing for the lively life of the mind - the delights of conversation at once serious and gay, which is, whatever its subject, Christ or poetry or history, the ultimately civilized thing. — Sheldon Vanauken

Magicians guard an empty safe. — Jim Steinmeyer

What have I to prove, and to whom, and why? I'm keen enough to want nothing more than to live a simple, humble, unfettered life. — Donna Lynn Hope

Since Drake told me that day in the wooded lot,
while the leaves agreed with gravity and left the trees,
that he liked boys instead of girls, it's been easier
to love him. Loving him feels like counting or using
the phone or something else that's effortless. I'm like
a leaf with nothing to do but fall. — Karen Finneyfrock

She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleam'd upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament:
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay. — William Wordsworth

How frail the bloom, how short the stay
That terminates us all!
Today we flourish green and gay,
Like leaves tomorrow fall. — John Clare

Gunn would be an important figure-rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring-in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now seems; he would be an important figure in the history of gay writing and in the history of transatlantic literary relations even were his poetry not so good as it is. With his life as it was and his works as they are, he's an obvious candidate for a volume of retrospective and critical essays, and this one is first-rate. — Stephen Burt

The maiden Olympics had more to protest about than mere war, though. Central to its ethos was a rejection of two establishments the political one, certainly, but also that of the wider poetry world itself. It changed poetry for ever in the UK, ... It led to readings all over the country. You suddenly got more women reading and publishing poems, as well as gay guys and poets from all over the world. Until that time, published poetry had been very university-based white, male, middle-class. We were trying to break poetry out of its academic confines. — Adrian Mitchell

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa! — Allen Ginsberg

To a Boy

Boy,
you are a hidden watering place under the trees
where, as the day darkens, gentle beasts with calm eyes
appear one after another.

Even if the sun drops flaming at the end of the fields where grass stirs greenly
and a wind pregnant with coolness and night-dew agitates your leafy bush,
it is only a premonition.

The tree of solitude that soars with ferocity,
crowned with a swirling night,
still continues in your dark place.

-Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato — Mutsuo Takahashi

The Trifler

Death's the lover that I'd be taking;
Wild and fickle and fierce is he.
Small's his care if my heart be breaking-
Gay young Death would have none of me.

Hear them clack of my haste to greet him!
No one other my mouth had kissed.
I had dressed me in silk to meet him-
False young Death would not hold the tryst.

Slow's the blood that was quick and stormy,
Smooth and cold is the bridal bed;
I must wait till he whistles for me-
Proud young Death would not turn his head.

I must wait till my breast is wilted.
I must wait till my back is bowed,
I must rock in the corner, jilted-
Death went galloping down the road.

Gone's my heart with a trifling rover.
Fine he was in the game he played-
Kissed, and promised, and threw me over,
And rode away with a prettier maid. — Dorothy Parker

So while I drove my little and planned his fantasy night of how I was going to give Otter the key to my soul (his words, not mine), I silently panicked and wrote lines of bad poetry. Normally, I am quite adept at writing poems and lyrics to songs I'l never sing, but this stuff was just atrocious. For example:
I love you
You love me
Thank God for that
I'm so happy
And Ty's personal favorite (which he helped me on):
Otter! Otter! Otter!
Don't lead cows to slaughter
I love you and I know
I should've told you soon-a
But you didn't buy the dolphin-safe tuna!
TY asked me if I got the hidden message in his poem. I told him it was loud and clear. — T.J. Klune

Why do women use make-up? They know the world is a make-up — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Now you listen to me, Joe. You will not badger or harrass me. You will leave me to think the way I want to think, here. I have to heal any way I can. You will stop asking questions and you will not give me any worry. You will not go after him. You will not terrify me, Joe. I've had enough fear for my whole life. You will not add to my fear. You will not add to my sorrows. You will not be part of this. — Louise Erdrich

Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview. — Marlon James

He came to read; two or three books
are lying open: history and poetry.
But after just ten minutes of reading
he lets them drop. There on the sofa
he falls asleep. He truly is devoted to reading-
but he is twenty-three years old, and very handsome.
And just this afternoon, Eros surged
within his perfect limbs and on his lips.
Into his beautiful flesh came the heat of passion,
and there was no foolish embarrassment
about the form that pleasure took.. — C.P. Cavafy

Sleeping Wrestler

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it's just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it's thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I'm one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you're going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler — Mutsuo Takahashi

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay — William Butler Yeats

Everything's weird on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' — Cheryl Hines

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight. — Maya Angelou

Winter noon is on the rise. Weak suns yet alive
are as virtue to suns of that other day.
For the poor town dreams
of surrender, mother
never untender,
mother gallant
and gay. — Anne Carson

I'm self-centered, inconsiderate, and what was the third adjective? Oh, yes, and I have this infantile fantasy that one day I'll amount to something as an actress. — Jay Presson Allen

Words will only ruin you, if you allow them. — Anthony Liccione