Famous gay love poems

From poetry tackling the complexities of affection to pieces about fellatio (yes, seriously), this look at some of our favorite gay poems will inspire you to give into that springtime lust — and then note about it afterward.

Some of the below gay poems are from writers you’ve likely heard of — Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Rimbaud, Walt Whitman, James Baldwin — while others may introduce you to a unused favorite writer or two.

Check out some of our favorite gay poems below:

1. Danez Smith, “The Year-Old & the Gay Bar” 

Smith is a black, gender non-conforming, poz poet from St. Paul, Minnesota, and he embraces his identity in his work. This poem specifically recalls a feeling we’ve all had — our first period inside a queer bar.

2. Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”

Arguably the most famous queer poet of the 20th century, Ginsberg and his band of Beat poets tore apart the usual conventions of poetry. Howl is Ginsberg’s most well-known and notorious (longform) poem, having gone through an obscenity trial for its brazen, provocative content.

3. Ocean

Love is love… is romance. But that doesn’t represent “love” means or feels the same every moment you experience it. Celebrating LGBTQIA+ love means acknowledging all the different types of feelings we contain, whether it’s romantic romance for a partner, treasure for our community, adore for ourselves or even love for a specific place. These poems rejoice queer love, whether that love is sweet, bittersweet or somewhere in between. 

When You’re Feeling Wildly, Exuberantly in Love, Read Andrea Gibson’s Love Poem.

Love Poem contains all the agony and ecstasy of premature love. From Gibson’s epically romantic declaration, “You are the moon when it blooms for the very first time” to their brutally honest line, “It’s true when we debate you make me wanna rip off my nose, bone and all,” this poem celebrates both the highs and lows of a giddy new care affair. 

When You’re Feeling Grateful for Your Lover, Peruse June Jordan’s Poem for My Love.

This poem tells the sweet story of two lovers, safe inside and marveling at their relationship:

I am amazed by peace

It is this possibility of you

asleep

and b

The Poem That Changed My Life: Ross Gay&#;s "Bringing the Shovel Down"

Not so very long ago&#;five years perhaps&#;I opened the pages of a book and began to read a poem that entirely reconfigured my notions of what a poem can perform. The poem was Ross Gay&#;s &#;Bringing the Shovel Down.&#; And, as is so often the case with world-transforming revelations, the encounter also hit me with the force of profoundest remembering: Here was an instance, a glorious, exfoliating instance, of all I had always hoped and believed about the ways and wherewithal of art. &#;Because I admire you,&#; begins this poem, &#;and beneath the uncountable stars / I hold become the delicate piston threading itself through your chest, // I desire to tell you a story I shouldn&#;t but will&#;&#;

Because I love you. The stakes are lofty, at once both intimate and mysterious: Who is this &#;you&#;? Who is speaking to the &#;you&#;? What has either of them to do with me? Everything, says the poem, as it moves through the vastness of the starry sky to the inwardness of the pulse in the breast with the hook tha

5 love poems by Diverse writers to read at your ceremony 

sthandwa sami (my beloved, in isiZulu) by Yrsa Daley-Ward

Written by year-old queer English writer Yrsa Daley-Ward, who is of both Jamaican and Nigerian descent, this beautiful love poem encompasses the excitement of dreaming about a life together:

&#;I can see the house on the hill where we grow our own vegetables out back
and drink passionate wine out of jam jars
and sing songs in the kitchen until the sun comes up
wena
you make me feel like myself
again. Myself before I had any strong reasons to be anything else.&#;

The Love Poems of June Jordan

Jamaican-American poet June Jordan has an entire book of love poems, aptly called Haruko/Love Poems.  Poems prefer Poem for my Lovewould be a lovely part of any ceremony. There is also a beautiful couplet from the poem, Update:

&#;Still I am learning unconditional and true/Still I am burning unconditional for you.&#;

For the Courtesan Ch&#;ing Lin by Wu Tsao

Wu Tsao, considered one of the great Chinese lesbian poe