Stephen Mead

Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/, Stephen Mead is a retiree whom, throughout all his pretty non-glamorous jobs still found time for writing poetry/essays and creating art.  Occasionally he even got paid of this. Currently he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art before he pops his cogs, https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/stephen-mead

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

& forget about me

to lose drama,

to lose the delicate edges of intensity spiraling-----

poems on either side, blazing & blown off

so the soul knows absolution & has no need:

Skin, bury me in, kind skin, consume me.

Under

covers, the multi-coats of deep-forest viridian

& ruby reddest as the best flannel

where warmth gives way to such visions,

I know where love lies finest as silks

of the rose, layer after layer, a blanket

of fragrances, & at the bud's eye

your world opens up,

flesh-tender, breath-lipped

& there is no place better

to wake in ever than this touch

just out of slumber.

Shore Leave

Sailor's serenade - the white lines of tight hips,

thighs shadow-black with folly's froth

the underside of waves as we know it too

in our own deep drink balancing solvency

on squalor far away as the beach

this sky records all the gaiety of

amid gull cries like rips

in the lining which reveals the vulnerable meat,

as we are vulnerable in the knowledge

of mortality balanced on ballast

over the go ahead, touch, sing sinking

but with tongues still on life.