Three Poems
THE CHALAMET COMPLEX
The first time seeing you
was like the first time seeing the
Call Me By Your Name trailer
sitting in the front row of the
sixteen-seat theatre under the library
where Timothée took my breath for the first time
& I thought who the hell is that
I was nineteen going on twenty
& it was a whole fresh wave of beauty
ground-breaking space for idolatry
new figure for the fantasy
curiosity calling me back that January
to Italy & eighties & nostalgia for things I’ve never had
seeing you was like that
it was like asking again & again
how in heaven can anyone be so
god-shamingly beautiful
you put the sun & moon to bed
with your celestial fingertips
with your eyes telling silent stories
you were unreal from the start
intangible as Chalamet
just a handful of stars
in my vision’s endless sky
just an angel making music out of miracles
see I never expected to find you grounded
to meet you on the plane of social exchange
I never expected to actually be friends with you
& god knows I acknowledged the blessing but
all of a sudden it was so much harder to revere you
so much harder to see you as a dream
& I stumbled over words that seemed unsatisfactory
struggling to string them all together right
speechless & starstruck & overly sentimental
looking for metaphors when you weren’t fiction
when you weren’t literature
when you weren’t imagery
which I couldn’t see through my Hollywood eyes
my perception of everything as pure story
see the thing that’s so good about Timothée
is that there’s no way to love him but in detached ecstasy
in dramatised glorification
in a vision that’s a perfect untruth
& the thing that’s so bad about you
is that that wasn’t the way to love you too.
IF YOU ARE EMPATHISING WITH HOMELANDER PLEASE GO THE FUCK TO THERAPY
You know, there are all these people on the internet & stuff
with ridiculous opinions about art
like ~ ‘every superhero movie is the same’ (???)
& ‘Ms Marvel is too woke’ as if other cultures are inherently political
or just straight up empathising with Homelander as if
The Boys isn’t an intensely dark & deeply satirical commentary
on actual current modern America which I find
so fucking hard to watch cos it’s too real
if you are EMPATHISING with HOMELANDER please go the fuck to therapy
& you know they say things like ‘everyone has an opinion!!’
which is of course true but theirs is just shit
I think there’s a difference between saying
‘Multiverse of Madness is the worst Marvel movie cos the
writing is a juvenile travesty & the plot sucks & they
vilified a traumatised woman with an entire developed character arc & the
CGI’s frankly embarrassing cos the studio doesn’t respect VFX artists’
& saying ‘I hate this movie cos they
diverted from the source material & added a QUEER person’
as if altering things from an era where
LGBT & POC characters were either token or not there at all
is a bad thing??
frankly I have seen enough movies about white men
Iron Man Iron Man Iron Man Captain America Captain America Thor Thor Thor
Black Widow wait no just kidding about that last one
didn’t happen till 2021
& then! the irony! of these white men!
being UP IN ARMS when a brown Pakistani teenager gets her own show
they won’t even give it a go cos they’re not the ‘target audience’
boys let me tell you if I boycotted everything with a white man in it
I wouldn’t have much left to watch
please just call yourself a racist misogynist & be done
with these frail excuses
you know I think the thing about art
making art, consuming art
is that it requires empathy
& if you don’t have any empathy it’s gonna go
so far over your head cos it wasn’t intended for you anyway
& you’re there tryna watch this feat of majesty
from the gutter of your own bigotry
& sounds to me like that’s
just a shitty view.
I DON’T FUCK ON THE FIRST DATE
We are in the cinema watching Multiverse of Madness
& this movie is unexpectedly trash
but what isn’t trash
is us, sitting interlinked in the third row
cackling uproariously over these shitty one-liners
me laughing at you jumping at the scares
your hand on my thigh
& I, just a little inconveniently horny
like excuse me don’t distract me
from what is supposed to be a good Marvel movie
It’s not very good but that’s ok
cos it’s entertaining in like, a comical way
like a B-grade horror from the 80s
& we roast it as we walk down the Brooklyn hill
in the solitude of dusk
& I don’t wanna ask if you’ve got anything to drink at your place
cos it’s too early to introduce you to
my mild addictive tendencies
but then we walk into your place & your flatmate’s all like
hey wanna drink?
I have a lot to thank this flatmate for actually
cos she introduced us
& she gave me a drink
& she shares her vape with me
but anyway this poem isn’t about her it’s about us
& we sit side by side on the couch
drinking wine & listening to 2010s bangers
but like, the actually good ones unlike
the rest of the 2010s ‘bangers’
it’s surely not that embarrassing to admit that I still fuck with
Good Night by Reece Mastin
& I fuck with you
but I’m not gonna fuck you
cos I don’t fuck on the first date
but then it’s 7am
after a night pressed together & sweaty in your single bed
& I’m like
[insert thirst emoji]
so we fuck, because I want to
because I’m practically begging to
& all the rhythms & angles are just right
just cheeky enough
& in my throes of passion I pull the
single sheet right off your single bed
Inspired by:
The Chalamet Complex - Call Me By Your Name (2017) - The growth & maturing of love
The Boys (& other superhero media) - The growth of the tv/film industry to be more inclusive & the incapability of dudebro nerds to keep up with that change
Multiverse of Madness (2022) - The growth of a relationship