Still Delight —

a Sonnet Sequence on the Life, Loves and Lines of

RUPERT BROOKE

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O for the muse of fire . . . Erato

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

        Rupert Wanted Surrender

                “Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate.

                  Love sells the proud heart’s citadel to fate.”~ Rupert Brooke

Would women be as likely as a man

To write such sentiments, to think of love

As breaching walled in strength, as Æthelstan

Attacking York?  Would Ecgwynn think that shove

And cracks were what a woman’s love should be

About, or would she judge that love is more

A matter of a mother’s chestnut tree

That brings forth candles and its nuts galore

In season?  Would a woman think a gate

Should be a battered door in love’s attack?

Indeed, would women feel that love is fate

Like battering rams deployed by maniac

Testosterone?  The fortress men protect

Is pride.  That swell is what must not be wrecked.

~ Phillip Whidden

“Apollo is here, divinely cruel, and Dionysus, who maddens by his presence”

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

    Apollo and Hyancinthus

Abandoning Olympus when One God

Arose from death, the Greek gods fled

To English public schools.  A football squad

In Rugby had new deities; so said

The poet Rupert Brooke.  They walked across

School fields in flannels that he wanted to . . .

Take down.  Much, much, much  more than a coin toss

He had in mind.  He wanted them to spew

A nectar much more potent than the one

That Ganymede had served to great God Jove.

The poet wanted equal sorts of fun

That Jupiter had had inside a grove

Of olives with the gorgeous boy back then.

Brooke wanted god-like joy with these young men.

~ Phillip Whidden

                           Him For Us . . .

The rooms in School House echoed with the sound

Of words he spoke, his steps along the hall,

His laughter, even shouts.  The outside ground,

In, say, the Close, though large, was far too small

For such a mind and soul.  You might arrange

To kill him in an epic war, but death

Was tiny set beside him.  It was strange

To him.  His poetry, a shibboleth

That Keats had spoken as his native tongue,

Preserved young Rupert like a Pharaoh set

To rise to stars and raised his verses rung

By rung on Jacob’s ladder till he met

That place perfection makes for boys like this

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

.And left him . . . as enlightenment and bliss.

~  Philllip Whidden

“Legendary Beauty” and “Rugby and Eton”–A Foursome of Sonnets

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

               Legendary Beauty

“Incredibly, inordinately, devastatingly, immortally, calamitously, hearteningly, adorably beautiful.”

~ Rupert Brooke

“the handsomest young man in England” ~ W. B. Yeats on the appearance of Rupert Brooke

What makes up legendary beauty in

A man, enough to make the “normal” guy

Be smacked by it and make him want to sin

With it?  When Yeats remarked on how the eye

Saw gorgeousness, he said that Brooke was at

The top of English masculinity

In fetchingness.  Young Yeats was no slouch hat

Himself; no, in the same vicinity

Of sexiness as Rupert.  Sedgwick called

   Ellery Sedgwick

Out to his wife, “I have seen Shelley plain!”

“Man’s beauty is much more rare”:  so enthralled

The editor was he could not refrain

From shouting up the stairs to tell his spouse

Inside their Rupertless marital house.

            Rugby and Eton

Why Shelley?  Percy wasn’t stunning as

That poet Sedgwick had been dazzled by.

Bysshe simply didn’t have the razzmatazz

Of killing gorgeousness that struck the eye

Of Sedgwick.  Shelley had a sweetheart mouth

And wavy hair but nothing like the face

Of Brooke.  Though delicate and not uncouth,

The head of Shelley wasn’t like the ace

In royal flushes.  Edward Williams might

    Edward Elleker Williams

Have disagreed.  These two were meant to love

Each other after they had died.  The rite

To burn their bodies lifted them above

Mere death.  Both men were married but they aimed

To be entombed as one, always inflamed.

“The worst of slaves is he whom passion rules.”~ Rupert Brooke

So is it any wonder that young James,

The brother of bent Lytton Strachey, should

Be stunned by Rupert and be caught in flames

Of unrequited lust for his boyhood

Fixation once his Brooke had blossomed like

A mythic Grecian flower with armpit hair,

So sexy that he could have been a spike

That Dracula drove  through him like despair?

This stake was almost six feet tall, myth sweeps

Of  hair of goldy, auburn, brown, mixed through,

Had deep-set eyes designed to torture, heaps

Of manliness to manage James’ heart’s coup,

Not mentioning that shapely manly mouth

And other strengths as James’ eyes travelled south.

“There’s little comfort in the wise.”~ Rupert Brooke

It seems that everyone who met Brooke felt

Compelled to cite his hunkiness once he

Had left his school.  The women’s guts would melt

And men would suffer Cupid’s harsh decree,

But Brooke was captured hard inside his cage,

Lust’s kinkiness for Lascelles.  James would write

To all about his torture, in a rage

Of whinge, as pitiful as it was trite,

But Lytton didn’t pity him as much

As sneer at his distraction.  Lytton thought

That he at least would not desire to touch

The poet, never wanting to be caught

Up in the frenzy—only to be “snubbed.”

Brooke wriggled, picky, about whom he rubbed.

~ Phillip Whidden

Wider Still and Wider from the Earth

“And in that Heaven of all their wish, there shall be no more land, say fish.”

~ Rupert Brooke

The fancies of that young one, Rupert Brooke,

Were wider than “just” girls and women.  He

Liked those—and more.  The autumn hair that shook

Him was the head of Charles Lascelles.  Its plea

Lodged sharply in the poet’s heart, twanging

Like arrows when they first embed their points

In targets on the field.  The waves hanging

Along that forehead struck him.  Shoulder joints

Became obsessions whether he could spy

Their armpit hair or not.  Their upper arms

Were potions like Isolde’s.  Then when an eye

Met his, he felt its glories and its harms.

  Those gorgeous harms went ricocheting through

    His ribcage, whether they were brown or blue.

~ Phillip Whidden

   The Genius of Love and the Jock

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

Of course it doesn’t matter that we don’t

Know just how beautiful Lascelles was:  he

Was not a poet.  Rupert Brooke was wont

To think the object of his love loomed free

Of flaws.  The eye of this beholder ached

As every lover’s does with craziness.

That vampire thing called love is better staked

Right through its heartlessness.  Love’s haziness

Prevents the tortured chest from seeing truth.

Testosterone produces dreaminess

When it is commandeered by swelling youth

With all its hairiness and steaminess.

  If portraits of Lascelles were found, he yet

    Would just be flesh the genius yearned to pet.

~ Phillip Whidden

Rugby Love Reduced to Black and White in Cambridge Love

That love continued into Cambridge days.

One Rugby beauty took another in

A frame and kept him in his room to gaze

At eyes, at stalwart auburn hair, and chin,

Not just in daytime, either, but in nights

Of loneliness without warm flesh and shape

Of truth, “truth beauty.”  Keats had known the heights

Of love frustrated.  Even just the nape

Of  solid neck in strength would likely be

Enough in Rupert’s mind to torture love

Like sweated heart, but then he could not see

From frontal view the shaft that rose above

The back of Charles as Brooke had seen it on

The playing field, that swelling skin of brawn.

~ Phillip Whidden

           Etched Joys, Wretched Joys

“Rugby is full of dreary ghosts of dead hopes and remembered joys” ~ Rupert Brooke

Lascelles was more than just another love

For Rupert. Charles was Rupert’s first love, more

Like God’s own “Fiat lux” while high above

The chaos of the loveless cosmos.  Sore

Were all his later loves except the one

With Taatamata, maybe.  Love for Charles was prime,

As in a template Christ spoke out.  A nun

Could cuddle with it happily.  The grime

Of other passions did not fit in with

That paradigm of innocence untouched.

Lascelles lined up in Rupert’s holy myth

As in a virgin petal left unsmutched.

  Sore also this one came to be, more pain

    Like unrequited passion lacking stain.

~  Phillip Whidden

No Need for Mary Magdalene: 

Robin Lane Fox Reports that One Ancient Source Claimed that Alexander the Great’s Natural Body Odor was Like Perfume

The beauty whom we cannot see through years

And shrouds of time is one we have no chance

Of seeing photos of.  Lascelles appears

In our imaginations.  In his dance

Of veils, Lascelles is bodiless and blank

Of face.  The veils are decades made of gauze

So thick we cannot know if “Charlie” stank

Of man when he came in from field applause

Or if like Alexander his hot sweat

Was like perfume.  We simply do not know

A thing about Lascelles’s form.  We bet

That he was not as lovely as the glow

That Rupert saw around him all wrapped up

In words inside his dampened jockstrap cup.

~ Phillip Whidden

Auburn Love Maleness Maleness Maleness

The way a twilight in the autumn turns

To unsung colors, so the chapel light

Inside the service changes from the burns

Of orange to a brown with red so slight

It slinks away as suns go down.  The red

Is almost memory, not real, as he

Walks past.  He turns his still advancing head

And glances like a glint of poetry.

The boy who would be poet feels that glint

Shoot down directly to his heart.  Lascelles

Has wounded it and left it with a tint

Of something like the dusk of chapel bells.

  Young males and boots come down the aisle tromp, tromp.

    Lascelles’ hair hushes them with auburn pomp.

~  Phillip Whidden

                So What?

“a Rugby athlete”

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” ~ Oscar Wilde

If we reduce the man to what he was

On Rugby playing fields, back when a lad

Who might have dreamed of poetry while fuzz

Was growing first upon his legs, a scad

Of hairs beneath his arms, that misses out

Complexities that make a poet.  He

Knew boysome love then.  Later he would pout

Out loud when women didn’t love him, see

His wonders—swooning down to his desires.

He sweated over sports, and girls, and boys.

So what?  These details should be piled on pyres

And burned like shameful lovers letters’ noise.

  What matters is the line, the line that stabs

    Aortas, not these little gossip scabs.

~ Phillip Whidden

                Stranger and Not Stranger

“Youth is stranger than fiction.” ~ Rupert Brooke

The two re-met two nights.  Young Brooke was known

To be opposed to what they were about

To do.  The other had been nursing overblown

Emotions for the poet, years.  A stout

Conviction might be overridden by

These feelings.  They discussed it.  Denham said

That it was wrong.  They, then, saw eye to eye

So nothing changed.  Right?  Rupert put his head

On Denham’s knees and things moved on from there.

They went upstairs to Denham’s bed and lay

On it, just one beneath the sheet, but blare

Of sex intruded.  Fingers went astray.

  At last the thing that they agreed was wrong

    Surmounted.  Denham took the poet’s prong.

~ Phillip Whidden

Denham and Truth Unveiled, Brown Hair, Sonnet Blue Eyes; the Purple and Black Cap of Rupert’s and Denham’s School House

The black and purple fell away.  He knocked

The cap for fun but also so that he

Could see his hair.  The light on it so shocked

Him that it made a gorgeous brown love plea.

A plea?  No, more a rich command of warm

Brown love was what it shouted.  Until

That moment it was silly.  Then a swarm

Of gravity began to swell and spill

Inside his chest.  He had not known till then

The meaning of the cosmos.  Then he grasped

The deep theology that tortures men

With rhapsody.  His hairless torso gasped.

  The boy looked up and saw the poet’s eyes.

    He saw truth’s facts.  They came as no surprise.

~ Phillip Whidden

                “A Channel Passage”

 

The ugliness of love, that sickness known

To him and everyone, deserves to be

Discussed and sonnetized.  A groan

With nausea upon the sickening sea

Of hormones, yep, testosterone and such,

Has been the poets’ tune forever since

The birth of verse, experienced too much

By Sappho and the others.  Innards wince

And try to throw it up, but what comes out

Are sonnets and a villanelle or two.

A violence of feeling or a pout

Is what we get, a rhyming kind of spew.

  What passage does he mean, though?  Can he mean

     The one that Denham gave below his spleen?

~  Phillip Whidden

Denham Alone Since He Alone was Not Alone–

A Foursome of Sonnets

 

          Outside and Finally In

“A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out all the years.” ~Rupert Brooke

Each year he finds a new one he can love.

The first (and last) was Denham Russell-Smith.

Love?  Well, not quite.  They worked to dispose of

Hard energy.  They hugged and rubbed the pith

Of maleness, hungry, but inside its cloth

Most probably.  They hugged and kissed and strained

Until each hardness was an Ostrogoth

Demand.   They loved until their lusts both stained

Their pants of pulsing in the dorm.  Parched in

The summers they had often gone alone

To be together in the woods for sin.

Two lay entwined, caressing bone and bone.

  This Denham had the smoothest skin and, then,

    It helped them find the way to be, both, men.

          The Opposite of Table d’Hôte

That happened only later, seven years

Beyond their primal meeting.  In between

That consummation and their early fears

Of being caught, they met and loved unseen.

Loved?  Well, perhaps the boy loved him.  He charmed

The poet with his honesty, brown hair, and lust.

He knew affection and delight had harmed

No person.  Rupert treated him like crust,

Or, rather, offered him the crumbs from his

Demanding table.  Then one surging night

In bed he gave him everything, his jizz,

And full meat course, and left a gravy blight

Upon the sheet.  The boy had always fished—

And then he got what everyone had wished.

          Fulfillment by a Massive Erection

A drowsiness preceded joy in bed.

The poet took him up and placed him on

His sleepy sheet.  He placed his floppy head

There where it opened slightly with a yawn

Forgetting years before when Rupert knocked

His school cap from his crown in playful fun.

(The boy had hoped that some night he’d be shocked

By startling beauty, beauty everyone

Had always hankered for.)  Harsh beauty raised

Those thighs and spread them.  Denham shut his eyes

Then opened them with loving pupils glazed.

He got what he desired.  This one was wise.

  All others had been starved.  He got the glut.

    The thrust moved towards his heart, up through his gut.

 

“The only thing the artist cannot see is the obvious.”

~  Oscar Wilde

“Well, if Armageddon is on, I suppose one should be there”.

– Rupert Brooke

Perhaps it went another way.  Perhaps

It wasn’t true and glorious as love.

Surrender was much more a moaned collapse

Than he had guessed.  The poet was above

Him.  Thighs rose up, and knees.  The poet, pained

By what he’d wanted all those yearning years,

Pushed.  Denham opened up.  He grimaced, strained

To let his one-time worshiper wince tears

From granting eyes across the grave one’s face.

The poet was consumed with rhythm and with greed

And so he didn’t see the paltry race

Of salty love.  He just shoved in his seed.

  He failed to note Denham’s doting distress

    But then complained about the dirty mess.

~ Phillip Whidden

          Unrequited Love in Men

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

“All the little emptiness of love!” ~ Rupert Brooke

Gigantic love alone is one small space

Inside the mind and guts of just one guy.

It’s like a complicated interface,

But tiny, ganglia trapped in a sky

Of bruise enormous in its hurt between

One galaxy and then another, pain

That only he can feel, huge, but unseen,

Though like a ruining, ever swelling stain.

No cure is known.  The medics, even shrinks,

Are useless.  Such a huge small thing is like

A pinpoint agony between the Sphinx

And death.  It needs a vampire’s fatal spike.

  A Black Hole at a galaxy’s black heart,

    This love is measured only by its smart.

~ Phillip Whidden

He Couldn’t Even Do a Good Job as the Chorus or a Fake Trumpet Player

 

“the victim of a doom of charm he apparently could not escape”

“Brooke’s friend Sybil Pye wrote of his stage presence: In spite of his expressive quality of voice and rare power of employing it, he had not, I think, any marked talent for acting. For this reason he was chosen to declaim only the chorus parts in the performances of Marlowe’s Faustus … Even this was not wholly a success. We missed at the performance all the charm of those rehearsals of his part with lovely gestures, which took place daily in the vicarage garden, when he would choose as audience the fat bull-terrier that belonged to the house … he would appeal with passion to the dog, giving chance observers the joy the audience was to miss. {377-378)”

“From this description, a critic might conclude that the “poses” of Brooke’s poetry are not false, but a talent underdeveloped and a fear or abhorrence of an audience that might pass judgement, driving the poet to make too many concessions or evasions for his censors.”

Imagine, if you can, his sins were crimes

Of charm and beauty.  Mostly he could not

Slough off his loveliness.  His eyes were chimes

Of blue perfection and his face was fraught

With orchestrated gorgeousness.  His arms

And body made up male airs for the stage.

These failed.  But never mind.  He managed harms

To almost all his friends and lovers.  Rage

Against them wasn’t acting.  He’d gone mad

With sexual rejection.  No applause

Resulted when he lost his charm.  His scad

Of gorgeouosnesses weren’t enough to cause

Commitment other than in bulldog hearts.

He made a mess of theatrical parts.

~ Phillip Whidden

     But What is Man’s Nature?

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

The poet’s lofty principle about

The buggering of boys’ butts was plain.

When physical with guys, his only shout

Was, “Follow nature.”  Poets should refrain

From filling holes not meant for making kids.

A woman’s hairy hole was what God made

For hard ons.  Later Freud would learn that Ids

Have other thoughts more like a thrusting spade.

But Rupert beat him to that finding.  Brooke

Decided principles were only that:

He had young Denham over and then shook

His nether hole with Rupert’s lunging splat.

High-mindedness is very, very well

Unless your cock begins to ache and swell.

~ Phillip Whidden

This accompanying video clip is explicitly sexual.  Do not open it if you think that it might offend you.

Growing Harder – XVIDEOS.COM

          Boys, Even the Poets, Become Men

When boys at school grow up, they go away

And do the stupid things that boy-men do.

They go do bed with women, or if gay,

The boys make love while using cum as glue

With other men, and if they’re young enough,

These other males, they use them as their toys.

Sometimes there’s love.  Sometimes the love is gruff.

If love like this is rough enough, there’s noise

Obscene to frighten horses in their stalls.

There’s poetry sometimes, if rhyming pole

Goes deep and hard enough for slapping balls

That try to cram themselves inside the hole.

  Both Denham and brown Taatamata felt

    Poetic beats from Rupert’s pubic pelt.

~  Phillip Whidden

Denham and his Thoughts while Being Fucked by the Poet Rupert Brooke–a Threesome of Sonnets

 

          Pain While Playing Games

We talk at first as though we do not know

Why we are there.  Of course he knows.  I sort

Of know and hope, as always.  A slow

And almost calm position forms, a sport

Like cricket, just for men who like the hard

Bat, sutured balls, and violence that scores

While looking gentle.  Someone might be scarred

For pleasure in these gentlemanly wars

But everyone embraces that and moves

Along to triumph and defeat.  It’s not

As if the boys expect to see goat hooves

On those they’re playing with.  We make a knot

In bed together or beneath hot trees.

We brag about how high he raised his knees.

That face that everyone desires looks down

At mine.  He hovers as he hunches in.

Pure eyes are hidden as each wincing frown

Of thrill increases.  It is more a grin

Of ecstasy than grimace.  Fallen hair

Sways deep above me and beside his face

As each thrusting finds its deeper way to where

He needs it here inside my sharper space.

He speaks and even in this moment makes

His monotone of passion penetrate

Me with his monument of want.  He breaks

His way right through.  He presses hard like fate.

  Despite the surging pain, I notice most

    His eyes and hair.  He blinks his silent boast.

At times his hair falls down across his eyes,

That hair of auburn, gleams of gold, and hints

Of red, though darker auburn, but with cries

Of poetry inside it.  With these glints

Of rigor made of rich metallic light

He captures me and everyone.  The lamp

Beside the bed brings out this furtive flight

Of arcing spirits which I try to clamp

Inside me for the courage to allow

Him what he claims.  I squeeze his twitchy strength

To try to hold him.  Hearts are known to vow

For far less noble things of lesser length.

  His hair that arches thickly up above

    His brows bucks, flopping, something big like love.

~ Phillip Whidden

Bad Actor in Two Sonnets  (Forever Entangled)

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

Bad acting doesn’t cut the mustard for

An audience; well, not for most.  Brooke posed

With trumpet (fake) and chiton.  What he wore

Was unimportant.  Beauty so disposed

Him that the tunic didn’t matter.  Still

All knew he wasn’t good at acting.  When

It came to love, the man was quite a pill

To swallow.  While he wrote to girls and men

He sometimes used the same words, letter to

This one, to that one, and another.  Truth

Each letter might have been.  If it were you

Receiving it, perhaps your guiltless youth

Might well have read his messages with hope,

But really Rupert had in mind a grope.

One letter to James Strachey took the cake.

Poor James had been in love with Brooke for years.

He made this plain as pain.  His every ache

Of love for him he sent to Rupert.  Tears

And loneliness were what he got in turn.

But then a letter Rupert sent him told him all

About the poet’s fucking of young Denham.  Yearn

And yearn poor Strachey suffered.  To appall

Him Brooke reported every detail of the night.

To Brooke the evening was adventure.  He

Was out for conquest.  Denham wanted quite

The most stupendous man in England.  Glee

Is what they both got—touched with sadness, too.

That thing called love was not deployed for glue.

~  Phillip Whidden

          On the Rubbish Heap of Time . . . 

The one he loved the most was Charles Lascelles.

We have to take Brooke’s word for it that he

Was beautiful.  As Rugby tower bells

Rang out the hours, a passion rhymed with glee

Pumped hard inside the future poet, hard

Inside like bell tongues that had learned to swell

Much more than sound, like anthems that bombard

A heart expanded with love’s holy spell

As anchorites accept the vision they

Can see upon the altar.  Charlie filled

That view, an icon that could make Brooke pray

To, hoping for returned devotion thrilled

With Rupert.  Images of Charles are lost.

We guess, but Charles’s beauty has been tossed.

                   . . . and Eternity

We know, though, that a photograph of Charles

Was kept by Rupert in his Cambridge rooms.

That’s it.  Otherwise, cold ignorance snarls

At our pathetic wish to know.  Blue fumes

As see-through as the scents from wicks are less

Than what exists of images of him.  One scholar thinks

That one house-photo guy is Charles.  A guess

Is all that is.  History mocks and winks,

A callous god, as callous as the god

Of love, love tortured Rupert with his crush

On Charles who alone was never awed

By Rupert.  Other boys were turned to mush

By Brooke.  His beauty was extreme, but , no,

Lascelles was Rupert’s source of crossed-arms woe.

~  Phillip Whidden

        Charles Lascelles Remembered

Imagine that an English boy loved you

The most of all — and everyone thought he

Was gorgeous…even straight men took the view

That he was stunning.  Reckon that a scree

Of years goes tumbling by and both are gone,

Both you and he, and in this later age

The only reason that you’re not a yawn

Now, clean forgotten, is that on a page

(And on another and another) love

Stings, written out in passion near your name.

Imagine void . . . except that once above

All others he had cherished you.  Your fame

Is only in those letters where he wrote

“Lascelles” because he licked your utmost throat.

~ Phillip Whidden

   Trinity’s Anchorite in Gentle Agony

James Strachey, lacking goldsmiths’ stunning hair,

Sat by his non-gold fire alone inside

His Cambridge room and felt the flare

Of shrined romance within his ribs.  It dyed

His arteries and veins the color of

A soul in paradise while also in

The Seventh Circle of Inferno.  Love

Of Strachey’s sort for Rupert looms as sin,

As multicolored as titanium

Transfigured, hot.   His paradise is just

As real.  Inside James’ blow-torched cranium

He daydreams of the poet’s loving thrust.

  Brooke’s snubbing of poor James calls in the Fates.

    Noël’s and James’s sex affair awaits.

~  Phillip Whidden

The Mother of Rupert Brooke Reacted Strongly against Praise of his Physical Beauty

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

“Indeed, it sometimes seems that every person who ever met Brooke, and certainly every person who ever wrote about him, felt compelled to write down their impressions of his appearance.” ~ Keith Hale, Friends and Apostles:  the Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914, p. 13

What must it be to be so hot that men,

All other men, are forced to say how stunned

They are by you, your looks.  Yes, every pen

Of every man writes stark ink orotund

Encomiums on beauty, holding back

From slavering, barely.  Then again it’s true

They focus on your face, your head, that sacque

Of richest hair of every perfect hue

You have to toss away from deep-set eyes

And poems’ forehead.  Long the strong arched neck

A famous portrait shows.  Men are wise

To hold back comments on it.  Such would wreck

Their butchness, though one scoffer said in jest

As “actress” he was prettiest and best.

~ Phillip Whidden

    Too Very Possible to Understand

“Born the second of three sons, Brooke was a deep disappointment to his mother, who had wished for a daughter. Brooke brooded over his mother’s sense of loss and the constant remarks of strangers on his skin that was ‘clear as a girl’s.’ He was inclined to comment that his mother’s wish for him to be a girl had created a feminine aspect in his nature, invariably mentioned each time he professed, in letters to . . . female friends, to understand woman’s nature. At other times he took refuge in his maleness; “I am a Man. Your letter was almost impossible to understand” ’ (Letters 399) .

His skin was so astonishing that men

And women, everyone, was forced to say

How beautiful and clear it was.  So when

They spoke of it, they thought it held the sway

Girlish gorgeousness and this was so

Completely obvious that they were forced

To mention it.  It troubled him to know

That all accepted mother’s hex, endorsed

Her desperation for the lad to be

A lass.  She wished so hard that it became

Reality against her wish and he

Felt that his face and form had made him lame.

  He felt he had to find a way to ban

    The fault.  He had to shout out, “I am Man.”

~ Phillip Whidden

            Squares and Triangles

“male society, cloistered rooms, and the works of the classics” ~ Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolfe

A cloistered room can be concocted in

An ordinary bedsit.  Cambridge rooms

Are not required. You sit and rest your chin

On loneliness.  Love’s sickness sends its fumes

To mesmerize you while you gaze upon

His face and head and shoulders in the frame

Around that photograph.  You know you’d fawn

Upon him if he’d let you, but you maim

Yourself with slavering of soul despite

Sane brain cells.  Years ago you said that he

Was Greek infinity.  That thought was trite.

Of course you knew that.  His divinity

Was angling on the school’s fields then but now

You torture heart valves, staring at that brow.

~  Phillip Whidden

    Cool as a Thick-haired Cucumber

“I have need to busy my heart with quietude.” ~  Rupert Brooke

James suffered like a teenybopper lass

In love with manufactured pop star guys.

He hovered like an altar boy at mass

Outside the poet’s rooms.  He hoped his eyes

Would see the lamp go on and then at least

Be sure the Presence and its holiness

Were near him.  James was lesser than a priest,

A lowly worshipper.  His lowliness

Compared to Rupert was like Shakespeare in

His sonnets begging both the boy and shared

Dark Lady for a chance.  James didn’t win.

He only sorrowed and looked up and stared.

  One time James met and asked him in the street

    If he would call.  He said “perhaps” they’d meet.

~  Phillip Whidden

                      A Solitary Fire

In bobby socks the teenyboppers used

To sigh or scream about a baritone,

Or tenor, or falsetto voice.  Amused,

Their objects of desire jived through a zone

Of smugness like a phoenix on its pyre.

Before these screeching fans, James Strachey hunched

In front of uni lodgings’ mopey fire

And dreamed of Rupert.  Strachey, sitting scrunched

Like Wile E. Coyote, gasped alone in

Sucked out ruination love.  He sat

In love’s paralysis.  Serotonin

Left Strachey slumped like Wile E.’s flattened splat.

  And did the poet care?  No, not one jot.

    The love of James was just a desert blot.

~  Phillip Whidden

Messy Splendor; or, Splendor in the Weeds

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

Jacques Raverat said that Rupert Brooke clothed himself “in a dishevelled style that showed off his beauty very effectively”.

     Jacques Raverat second from right

You’ve noticed for yourself that gorgeous ones

Don’t have to care about their clothes.  They wear

Wotever since they know their beauty stuns

No matter what.  A T-shirt, dirty pair

Of jeans, or un-ironed blouse will do.  They throw

On anything they see along the floor

Or tossed on chair backs.  Anything will show

That they are not like us.  An opened door

(A closet) will reveal forgotten rags

And any item will suffice to make

The rest of us look blah who look like hags

And Harpo Marx, to make our egos shake.

  Dishevelled stylishness is all they need.

    Unfair esthetic gaps are pre-decreed.

~ Phillip Whidden

             Niceness as a Weapon

A poet can’t be boring, that’s except

When sloughing off those arrogant demands

From men as snooty as Lytton.  Inept

This hunter was. He never got his hands

On Rupert.  Beauty and the Beast reborn

Was what that situation was.  Brooke came

By invitation.  Should beauty adorn

Apostles in their haughty, secret shame?

No, Brooke decided.  He was very nice

To Lytton in the Strachey house, but that

Was it, a kind of nice more like smooth ice.

Brooke bored the Stracheys, shmoozed too nice in chat.

  He left unsullied and untouched by James

    And Lytton, nicely dampering their flames.

~  Phillip Whidden

          Not Just Fame

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

“Sherril Shell’s Byronesque reproduction of Brooke’s own devising (the one his friends thought revulsive enough to dub ‘Your Favourite Actress’), takes precedence over his poetry.”

   Rupert Brooke

   Lord Byron

If Brooke himself devised this Byronesque

Arrangement, black and white, then maybe he

Was wiser than the rest.  Too Junoesque

In beauty hovering, divinity

Upholding him forever after on

The photo printing paper, this cliché

(Though not cliché because the lovely swan

Is male and not a goddess) shows the way

To view this follower of Byron.  Byron, too,

Loved boys and women not quite balanced in

Brooke’s life, but still . . . weighing this profile view

We reckon what this later Byron’s sin

Appears like.  Gazing past the photo’s frame

He thought of boys and women,  Zeus and fame.

~ Phillip Whidden

“unsettled by the devotion he aroused”

The complication with high carat gold

In men is no one knows quite how to cope

With “gorgeous” in a guy.  His beauties scold

All those around him.  Most go off and mope

Because they know they do not have a chance

At him or when competing with his charms.

His beauty acts like Teflon^®.  Just one glance

Deflects all hope.  The beauty brings on harms

In all before him.  He looms, David with

His sling, and those who might be giants find

That they are crumpled by the boy.  The myth

Is brought to life in Rupert.  All go blind

Like lumbering Goliath with the stone

Between his eyes.  Both men and women groan.

~ Phillip Whidden

        Approximating versus Knowing

He wasn’t photogenic, no, not quite.

Some formal portraits capture beauty, glow

Almost with glory, but don’t hold the might

To hint enough of what he had to show,

Why men and women staggered in their hearts.

These pictures made with cameras and with oil

Are lacking crucial force.  They seem like charts

Of continents that cannot show seeds’ soil

Or Everest heights.  His hair and flesh and face

Left people wounded and transfigured.  Christ

Would know about such things and might abase

Himself, caressing while his side is sliced.

  The beauty of this poet sliced right through

    The guts of those who saw him.  These ones knew.

~  Phillip Whidden

  “Almost Ludicrously Beautiful”

“His looks were stunning – it is the only appropriate adjective.” ~ Leonard Woolf

 

“the handsomest young man in England” ~ W. B.Yeats

 

“He [Ganymede] was regarded as the most beautiful human on earth, male or female.” ~ Mythology Source

 

“the whole effect was almost ludicrously beautiful” ~ Henry W. Nevinson

I wonder what is wrong with women.  They

Were offered classic beauty in a man

Who walked among them, beauty that would say,

Like lightning flashed from Zeus, its sky-wide span,

When first he saw his Ganymede, “Reach out

And have me, now, Now, NOW.”  But most of them

Said no.  Oliviers refused to shout,

“Come into me, Male Beauty. Lift my hem

And give me all your gorgeousness can shove

Inside.”  Society beauties were far

Too stuck up. Even married men could love

His utter awesomeness, more than a star,

More like a constellation such as Zeus

Made Ganymede.  Brooke’s beauty was profuse.

~  Phillip Whidden

     Into

     Deep

       Water

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

In front of Brooke’s veranda stood a dock.

This wooden altar offered diving height

To deep blue water.  He could interlock

With beauty, every beauty there in sight,

By diving into South Pacific waves

Especially if Taatamata saw

His arc.  These two had entered love’s deep naves

Together.  Rupert plumbed in her the awe

That he had always craved, that doubled love

We always search for.  “Purepure” is how

They called him.  (He was fair.)  The sky above

Them arched to hold them:  no black prayer book vow

Was needed.  Deepest waters gathered both

Together.  Love does not require an oath.

~ Phillip Whidden

Tropical Heat Meets English Poetry

Together Taatamata and taut Brooke

Spread open her vanilla orchid flower.

While it was tropic pink, not white, it took

His darker flesh invasion and its power.

Its power spread open her Tahiti flesh

And spread it, thrust it fleshy, veiny wide

For what he had to offer.  Brooke left fresh

Off-whiteness there inside the pink, inside

Her willing wantonness.  He shot its verse

So deeply in her slickenened heat, desire,

That she was stunned with maleness and its terse

Command, its terse demand, its ivory fire.

  It splattered hotly there inside her, in

    Her secret place, more beautiful than sin.

~ Phillip Whidden

     Tahitian Light and Dark

They called him “Purpure” because his hair

Shone light instead of black like theirs.  It shone

Of poetry, perhaps, or maybe flair

Of charm. Their combination might atone

For many sins and signally his spell

Translated clearly in their tropic parts.

He fell in love.  Tahiti made love swell

In both directions.  In warm tropic hearts

He found a new dominion.  Cambridge ways

(And Rugby ways) had thwarted him in love,

Both boys and women.   Then Tahiti’s days

Revealed to Rupert something far above

The tightness of his English past.  Now nights

Of love showed beauties set beside dark lights.

~ Phillip Whidden

There’s Poetry and Then There’s Poetry

“There are three good things in this world. One is to read poetry, another is to write poetry,

and the best of all is to live poetry.” ~ Rupert Brooke.

The schoolboy grown to be a poet found

Intensest poetry inside the holes

Of men and women.  Selfishly he ground

His way to heaven, tattooing their souls

With poetic thrusting and with semen.

Both they and he all thought that he was like

A god, part god and poet, a daemon.

He wrote white lines inside them with his strike.

The rumors are that he got women big

With more than poetry, with off-white verse,

But as for Denham Rupert danced his jig

Between his hips and left.  That poetry was terse.

  Tahiti’s Taatamata saved inside

    Her something more sustained than Rupert’s sin.

~ Phillip Whidden

          There’s Lucky and There’s Lucky

A girl with eyes involved with awe, and stroll

Of goddesses, and heart that angels knew

Who sang with Gabriel, would have a soul

To offer to a poet.  She might view

Him as a blond and blue-eyed rhyming knight

Descended from medieval realms where love

Was chivalry, descended from that height,

Descended like the Holy Spirit dove

Including man’s and poet’s tongue of fire

Upon her breasts, brown nipples, and her lips.

He turned to holiness the hot desire

That raised her banging heart and heaving hips.

  He rammed in something rawer than his verse

    And left her holding inner glow and curse.

~ Phillip Whidden

Taatamata and Denham Russell-Smith

The evidence, it seems, implies that stuff

With women caused him greatest grief, except

For Taatamata.  Mother was enough

To force him to desire control.  She kept

Him on the tightest lead as best she might

And love for Ka produced a nervous snap that sent

Him all around the world.  One surging night

His love for younger males received assent

From Denham Russell-Smith who in return

Received command from Rupert.  This control

Urged, utter, hard.  In Rupert it was stern.

In Denham, welling up, the need was whole.

Assent is what the poet wanted most.

He got it from one hostess and one host.

~ Phillip Whidden

Brown Beauty and Others Left Behind

“more tourist still than soldier” ~ Rupert Brooke

America and Canada, their spine

Of Rocky Mountains, called across the sea,

Their men and women waiting, near supine

Already.  Rupert left behind debris

Of men and women who had seen his nude

Self, naked as the men who modelled for

God statues for the Greeks.  He left, all, crude

In breaking hearts.  A white Tahitian shore

Called out to him and offered him a crown

Upon the head of perfect womanhood,

A crown of flowers for them both, this brown

Palm bending beauty with her sandalwood

Submission-giving poetry unmatched

Between her bedroom sheets with passion thatched.

~  Phillip Whidden

     Boys, Even the Poets, Become Men

When boys at school grow up, they go away

And do the stupid things that boy-men do.

They go to bed with women, or if gay,

The boys make love while using cum as glue

With other men, and if they’re young enough,

These other males, they use them as their toys.

Sometimes there’s love.  Sometimes the love is gruff.

If love like this is rough enough, there’s noise

Obscene to frighten horses in their stalls.

There’s poetry sometimes, if rhyming pole

Goes deep and hard enough for slapping balls

That try to cram themselves inside the hole.

  Both Denham and brown Taatamata felt

    Poetic beats from Rupert’s pubic pelt.

~  Phillip Whidden

     The Flimsiness of Letters

 

“All the little emptiness of love!” ~ Rupert Brooke

 

What kind of letters?  Letters in a clay

Configuration, cuneiform shapes gone

For thousands of declines in their array

In sunsets, twilights and each hopeless dawn

Were letters that avoided hope until

Some scholars cracked their code in Europe.  Baked

Hard clay gave up its meanings.  To distil

A letter on thin paper now long raked

By Brooke’s biographers is still a failed

Attempt.  Perhaps it says that he had made

A child in Taatamata.  Words are veiled

In broken English.  Meanings are betrayed.

  Her letter and its letters fail to speak

    Their sense.  Love’s flimsy essence turns oblique.

~ Phillip Whidden

                Big Boy Hunk

m

The Big Boy Hunk that isn’t Rupert Brooke

On Skyros is just too, too like the false,

False images built up around him, like a crook

Has pulled a dirty trick but wants to waltz

With you, no matter what.  The Big Boy Hunk

Stands towering there above the profile made

Of metal on its squared up plinth.  The junk

Between those thighs would never make the grade

In bed with Denham, Taatamata or

His worshipers post-death.  The curves of “Brooke”

Himself are offset by the four by four

By four shapes underneath.  They mock the look

Of him in life.  Rectangles, squares, and straight

Lines contradict the truth of beauty’s weight.

~  Phillip Whidden

          Going Clunk, Clunk, Spunk

The pedestals that hold him high, high, high,

Reveal the truth unwittingly.  Inside

The straight rectangularities the sly

Truth comes in code.  Still swirls all elide

In bending curvatures both dark and light,

The the swathes and the darker ones all say

He was not straight.  Up at the very height

He poses as a bisex god.  Dark gray

He stands upon the final plinth which tells

The lie again, just darker in its hue.

The lower curving patterns in their swells

Speak messages more certain and more true.

  His metal muscles dark and hard and firm

    Imply he made both boys and girls squirm.

~ Phillip Whidden

England’s Inoculation and Therapy for the Virus Called War, April 4 and St. George’s Day, 2015

 

Fate slapped him in his face and carried on

With tattooed beauty on its fingers, palm,

And skin much longer like a lingering dawn.

His sonnet read out loud as if a psalm

In London’s main cathedral by the Dean

On Easter from the pulpit days before

The poet’s death on Shakespeare’s date, was seen

By all the next day in The Times.  Fate’s sore

Was opened, though, by one mosquito bite

Upon the poet’s lips.  It killed him like

No kiss that Brooke had known, not in a night

With Denham or Tahiti, like a spike

Or bayonet akin to what Brooke shoved

Up toward their hearts, those two whom he had loved.

~ Phillip Whidden

Empty Charms Replaced His Stunning Charm — Two Sutured Sonnets

The media in ignorance gets in

The way of people’s understanding of

The truth.  They put a glossy glamor spin

On heroes and then shy away from love

That falls outside the types that Christians would

Approve of.  Once the bug-bit Rupert Brooke

Was dead, the papers stuck to what was good

For women’s sentiment.  An inglenook

In which he shared his body with a guy

Or tropic love resulting in womb

Filled, mixed race-wise, would surely be awry.

No hint of this would decorate his tomb.

  An airbrush would have been applied to save

    His beauty in reports about his grave.

The readers would not know about his friends’

Determination to wrap round his loss the view

That somehow poetry could make amends

For his pale septic death. His eyes of blue

Were like the epic sea around the isle

Where he was buried, Skyros.  Just from there

Achilles left for Troy, his cross-dressed guile

Defeated.  Though this didn’t really square

With heroism, Rupert’s friends were sad

Enough to grasp this mythic straw to bend

His death to something noble.  They were glad

To make this link to glorify their friend.

  Besides, the death of Theseus was here.

    They clutched at details from the epic sphere.

~ Phillip Whidden

                                 Blending

Until the centuries come and blur away,

Until they come and go like spirits, or

Like ghosts, let us, together, come and sway

As one, if that be possible.  Let each one’s core

Become the other’s by a blending of

Our souls and bodies.  I will wear my shirts

Which Ka has made until we find our love

When clothes come off and we have raised your skirts.

I want a sacred bond that life could not

Propose with Denham, or with Charles, or James.

I want a frenzy, elements all hot,

A Pentecostal pact with hovering flames.

  Let’s make our love eternal here in time,

    A thing of chant-like ecstasy and slime.

~  Phillip Whidden

              A Hovering Sexual Position

Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem

The poet, Rupert Brooke, felt trouble with

Deciding what his sex position was.

He listened to his gay friends’ favorite myth

That what they did with males, those touched with fuzz

Around their genitals, was normal as

Banal sex stuff in marriage beds.  When James

Desired him to perform his sexy snazz

In him, Brooke nixed that form of manly flames.

Noël was whom he wanted to deep poke,

But she rejected Rupert.  After he

Was dead, Noël took Rupert’s would be bloke,

James Strachey, in her hole she used to pee.

  Imagine Rupert floating low above

    Them, ghostly, just as James began to shove.

~ Phillip Whidden

                              Wince

“Hynes succeeds in reducing Brooke to two pitying, scathing lines: ‘Poor Brooke: it is his destiny to live as a

     supremely poetical figure, shirt open and hair too long and profile perfect – a figure that appeals to that vast

    majority that doesn’t read poetry, but knows what a poet should look like. But as a poet he is not immortal – he is only dead. . .’ ”

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song . . . and for ever young

 

. . . Forever England

The situation might have been far worse.

Brooke might have been an ugly little wimp,

Poetic as a Walter Mitty.  Verse

By Rupert might have been forgotten, limp

As mashed potatoes when they’re warm.  His shirt

Instead could be high-buttoned up and hide

An unpoetic chest, his hair too curt

Like most young men’s, his forehead, low, astride

Two boring eyes and prose-like cheeks (instead

Of noble wide-boned beauty) and a face

In profile like an E. M. Forster head,

No face as graceful as a Grecian vase.

  His readers may not know his poems well,

    But they know him.  The rest can go to hell.

~ Phillip Whidden

                A Diminished Thing

We’ll never know what Rupert looked like at

The age of 69, his hair thinned out

And lacking luscious lustre, dull and matte,

A would-be brassy wheat field in a drought.

We’ll never know what Rupert looked like when

His skin sagged sallow on his slumping cheek

Or when his hips began to hollow, pen

Run out of ink, their juiciness gone bleak.

We’ll never know what Rupert Brooke looked like

When hairiness on calves and thighs began

To fail with graying hair above his spike,

That veiny one, when lines lost rhymed elan.

  We think of Wordsworth writing at his worst

    In later years with poems shrunk and cursed.

~ Phillip Whidden

“Mythical Land of the Ever Young”

“I can’t help feeling that he has been smothered and castrated, and there he is,

quite different, and memorable, could we disinter him.” ~ Virginia Woolf

 

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.” ~ Laurence Binyon

The poet Rupert Brooke has now become

A Peter Pan – as mythical as that.

We hear his beauty and his verses thrum

Throughout the world.  He’s like a lovely brat

Who can’t grow up or old.  His beauty wanes

Not, like those other heroes killed in wars

And trumpeted in ceremonies, strains

Of poetry, and Cenotaphs.  The doors

Of everlasting platitudes have closed

Him in, eternal as Egyptian kings

In mummy form but beautiful.  He’s posed,

Ideal, his glamor like archangels’ wings.

  The problem is that he was never such.

    Our sentiments refuse the slightest smutch.

by phillipw | Mar 17, 2022 | Uncategorized | 0 comments