Angry June Moon Says Hello: Poems to Come Out To

By Kevin Burke

Nearly thirty years ago, poet Kevin Clifford Burke embarked on a journey taken by so many: that search to understand who we are, where we fit into our family, and how we can accept ourselves and embrace our own being. As a young man, Burke struggled with his homosexuality, that struggle made all the more difficult by his family’s rejection. What evolved from his challenge is a compelling and lyrical collection of poetry, Angry June Moon Says Hello. From first poem to last, readers are pulled into the author's emotions and invited to follow the chronology from cloistered heart to discovery of self, and his final emergence into acceptance and love. From the depths of pain to the elation of discovery, he writes of How softly this song is really sung: / Each time I sing / The song is just begun / As the shadows drift away / Dancing before our figures, / Arising before the sun. What better words to remind us that every soul deserves to bask in the light of day?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Burke
• Release date: Oct 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005448110

Kevin Burke

Kevin Clifford Burke is a poet, singer and guitarist. He is the author of three books of poetry entitled: Angry June Moon Says Hello: Poem To Come Out To (2010), The Bridge of Love (2011) and now his new book of poetry XULECA LOUNGE (2022). The author is a psychoanalyst/psychotherapist in private practice. Mr. Burke also worked as a manager in the NYC child welfare field for over 30 years from which he recently retired. Mr. Burke and Miguel, his husband and partner of thirty-eight years, reside in Staten Island, NY. The author is a cabaret performer, a singer/songwriter and classical guitarist who has been performing regularly in New York City cabaret venues for over a decade.For more information visit his website: KCliffordBurke.com.

Book preview

Introduction:

A Coming Out Travelogue

These poems are divided into seven chapters of my life. Although they do not include all of my life’s chapters (a comforting thought), they do capture significant time periods from 1972 to 1998, forming seven different but very connected trajectories. The first period (1972) is represented by the poem Flash Shining Sun, the first stanza of which was written when I was twenty. The other stanzas were recently written and are variations of the first stanza’s theme. Although it is about masturbation, the poem delves way far beyond that and explores my early repressed sexuality, my struggle to find some sort of sexual freedom, and then the price I paid whenever I risked that possibility. This was at a time when I lived deeply in the closet and had started to become aware of others who did not. However, it was inconceivable to me how I could ever join them, because I felt so morally stranded, isolated, guilt-ridden, and afraid to take my life into my own hands. The second period (1975) became my first real effort to come out, which I quickly ended when my father received a horrible, sarcastic, and attacking letter from a former friend of mine revealing that I was gay. He angrily confronted me about the truth of it. I vehemently denied it and proceeded to withdraw from the world and who I was: attempting to at first be straight, and then, when that was not possible, I ended up hibernating in therapy, sorting out my feelings. The poem Henny Penny Gets Plucked (originally titled Tune to a Frightened Homosexual) describes these events and my mental state at that time.

A year later, after a long winter, I finally got the courage to leave home, get my own apartment, and begin dating guys. It was 1976, the bi-centennial year of the U.S.A. in New York City, around the Fourth of July, and the sailors were in town! The poems of this period celebrate coming out for me. They also deal with the subject of manhood, my internal and cultural barriers, and my search to break past these things and move into something new and more authentic. Childhood Mother’s Song speaks to breaking away from my mother; Suicide deals with breaking past male stereotypes and feeling that I had to stoically hold things inside; The Dream, Park Corners Shelter, and Of Walls, Sticks and Stars are erotic fantasies and romantic paeans to sexual and intimate freedom. Coming Out explores these themes and also the chains that society and my own psyche