Very Good Paperback Sun Ink Pubns, 1980. Book. Very Good. Soft cover. Signed by Author(s). Signed by the author with brief inscription. With several photos and musical scores. Bright covers have lightly faded, and front has a mild crease to corner. .
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