Stark Naked in '69 and '79

Book by Masten, Ric

NUDE IN 1954
(to a photograph taken by Cole Weston)

aside from baby pictures
it was the only time I ever posed nude
so I suppose
because the flesh was mine
I blow the whole thing out of proportion

but every time
I see my pale young body
held in the arms of that splintered tree
I cannot help but draw the parallel

it was all there that day
the threatening sky
hanging
like the blunted blade of a guillotine
the hill
black as the one at Golgotha
the tree
electric and waiting

we both saw it
but you were older and owned the camera
and so it was
that I
stripped of everything
climbed into the wooden harness
and made the moment work

and now...
centuries later
I'm told that what I did for art
has made my backside
the butt of smutty remarks

that in the city of New York
undesirable women
look and leer
licking their lip
s calling me stud

that I who have stepped to the thud
of Norman Mailor's drum
have been framed and hung
in leather-bar bathrooms

that I so shy I turned my face
have come to see my body bought and sold
in the marketplace

as always
the real crucifixion
comes long after the original event