The Queertose Suite
by Keeley Young
Friday, 24 January 2025.
Creative juices are spent, my dear. I have not been writing a piece of fiction that has connected, melded in my brain, in some time—I worry this is the end for me, I have used all of the good ideas in my brain? No, not the ideas—the manifestations.
I write to you in the hopes that I will suddenly come to a realisation about how to process forward with my writing. Could it be possible to write some poetry?
I stood up, away from the typewriter, staring down at the letters inked on the page. No, I was not in the past, no I was not near a typewriter, no I could not give up on my writing because the inspiration would strike at just the perfect moment — —
On Friday, 24 January 2025, I wrote a short piece of poetry, which I soon afterwards posted as an Instagram story because it would perfectly fit within a screenshot:

In understanding how I loved, how I am cherishing this break out of the creative block I was experiencing, I typed up and edited the short piece of poetry. Below is the latest version of the piece, which is unnamed, but comes within this so-called Queertose Suite.
in between holding in breaths,
and trying to blow out a headache like a candle,
I dream of being held without fear and danger.
holding a belief in words and nodding.
when they say, I will only do what you’re comfortable with
-- can I believe it?
will I believe it with the hands somewhere on my body
find myself telling a boy two states away I want to hold him in my arms
and I believe it
how, how on earth, when on earth…
it is the liking of straight men,
the liking of unavailable men,
far far away men,
cannot-hurt-you-because-they-are-behind-a-screen men.
I want to be held.
want to be held without dismissal.
can I be naked without a thought of sex
thrusting itself up against me
can I be naked in someone’s arms
and not take two months to recover from it
Truthfully, this one required very little editing. But suddenly I had myself a new tradition, albeit one that could be short-lived if I wanted of it to be. I set myself a new sort of task: everyday, write a piece of poetry short enough to fit the screen of your phone. Exhaustingly so, some of these works within the Queertose Suite are uncomfortable, depressing, bleak, but at least somewhat hopeful.
I wish to share them all with you now, alongside some photographs.
Saturday, 25 January 2025
I do not hold blame to the boys who kiss me goodbye,
when they realise they cannot fuck me.
human desire is a mistress, unrobing into her lingerie.
I am television-boxed at the crotch,
flicking between rock-hard penis and Ken doll flatness.
no ordinary boy.
flatlining in an ordinary world.
I do not hold blame to the boys who decide getting to know me without a hope for sex
is pointless and meaningless
you have to hold onto your purpose,
a more-comfortable thought process,
to avoid thinking you are made of disfigurements.
this waiting game to find out if I will be enough without being a hole,
being a penis,
being a release of sexual frustration and lust motivation
is strange. morphing.
sometimes like the drip of morphine
increasingly numbing me.
I do not hold blame to the boys.
they should be happy.
Sunday, 26 January 2025
a little bit like a philosophy,
life is too short — a chord to be cut
when I started posting myself like I was posing for an old school magazine
I thought about the people who would think.
what thoughts
what thoughts?
Fashioned from seaweed and self-importance I thought people would cut through the air
with dismissive chalk
that people unaware of a certain side of me would shudder.
oh no he’s not got any prudish clothes on.
oh no he’s a queer whore (no I’m not omniscient I didn’t know he is aegosexual I don’t even know what that looks like)
sharing for the attention of men and the attention of a conversation are of the same,
cut out of the jockstrap I don’t wear so that someone can sneak up behind me…
life is too short — don’t be afraid of liking what you see
a little bit like a philosophy
so this body goes to less waste before the bin day.
Monday, 27 January 2025
suffering as the word is wrong,
I hinder from — pause, out of panic, from,
this want to flirt, to tease, to be romantic
with the men I find impossibly attractive
but I haunch back, reserved — too much and these men will find me:
aggressive, excessive,
wanting of too much.
I only want to tell you you’re pretty.
run my fingers through your hair.
make you feel noticed, even if the notice
comes like a late rent slip
comes like a Big Brother nomination
I just want to make you aware, respectfully,
of the dusted moth flutter of being liked
by someone like me.
liked in the complicated sense —
maybe there is hope I won’t feel startled away from your embrace.
I want to tell these beautiful boys
just how much their grace threatens to unbalance my scepticism
‘round being vulnerable. uncertain. passionate.
I hinder from: thinking they will reject it.
find me like one of their brothers.
baby and dummy and stupid.
what do you do for work?
what do you do to not kill yourself.
it is unbalancing to have to admit as the fourth statement in a conversation
that your life is an upended mess,
you work a job that makes you suicidal,
and you no longer have the energy for life to be ambitious.
clinchingly.
aw no you’re at work. how long do you work. what do you want to do with yourself.
what can that degree get you. you still have time —
— fuck off. I feel hopeless, helpless,
tangled up in a wreck of cords and wiring
I no longer know a nook to crawl into.
the screaming has to be dulled, funnelled,
until you are saying the same methodical repletion like a sociopathic answering machine.
when another handsomer man merely wants to get to know you.
how do you afford to keep yourself afloat
is a quietened form of
how do you make the money to purchase
the chocolate you house down [fatty]
the skimpy clothes you feel desirable in [slut]
the entertainment that keeps you breathing [little kid.]
blink and you’ll miss it
the moment you think for a second you could have steamy,
thrilling sex with someone from your past
who has flitted back into your life only if for the night.
you picture the sex to be gaudy, brutish, dirty,
made only of the finest quality lusting.
he does a complete reshuffling of a somewhat well-maintained ecosystem.
but you’ll never be comfortable with this brain in this body
in this world
to be even his fuck buddy.
The desire for some pornographic fantasy with a man you probably once assumed disliked you, thought you weak and naïve and unintelligent,
is the same sensation you get when you lie
down undressed in bed
wanting scripted pornography.
this shit is not real.
you’re giving yourself something to taste in the head,
a morsel, something to give you a boner later,
when his face is already fading away again,
and so is yours. it’s not your sex.
Wednesday, 28 January 2025
we taste blood either way,
me and the gnatty voice inside my head
when again I am told: you’re an incredible person, Keeley,
worth more than your talent and your body.
I bathe in compliments until they become overbearing.
until the paint irritates flesh and scratchy red bumps form without restraint
like an AI installation.
you tell me again, and again, how worthy of a being this soul in this vessel is,
you remind me too many times.
no we do not move any mountains,
make no leaps and bounds in deviating
from the complicated person you may not see
when I am over here without you.
with the metaphorical razor blade in hand,
demons cannot be vanquished
not with indulgence.
thank you for believing me to be something worthy of attention.
yet.
I cannot believe hyperbole to be true.
not yet.
Thursday, 30 January 2025
why live life from dream to dream
when the dreaming is all but dead.
boxes packed away into the storage
of the ideas for life I used to have,
like being a proper functioning member of society.
now I sit on my phone considering
a Contiki tour of Iceland
even before I have a passport,
or some semblance of stability,
or a yearning to be surrounded by strangers
late night whatever-ing.
being bold, ambitious, excited, carefree.
why pretend to yourself you know anything,
when your existence is a burden
constructed out of the loose materials you find
at a torn-apart campsite in the woods.
probably was a bear.
ravenously hungry, to feast on your parts,
before they could even come to any fruition.
I make new decisions that throw caution to the very wind I was carried in on.
when I die, in my late thirties,
all I’ll ever be is forgotten.
so let me go Icelandic.
Saturday, 1 February 2025
knees that scratch against bus seats,
legs trapped in a hook by a sleeping kitty,
someone asks you seriously,
“why do you keep yourself stretched so much?”
when you think you do not stretch yourself enough,
when the film screenings and the two-hour train rides
are security blankets, protecting you
from shaking yourself out of a sense of believing in you.
torsos comforted in embrace,
hands clasped together to test the temperature,
you want nothing more than for the right someone to ask when they can hold you in their arms and only let go when it would cut off the circulation not to.
weekends become a getaway from everything,
for everything,
to the point you want to stop coming home,
grumped, bothered, you had places to leave.
thrilling — to have a life with newfound confidence.
thrilling — to be so in love with the time you have with your exit row companions.
when you last developed feelings for a man,
someone you had to sideline and obliterate,
push out the brain,
you killed the want for affection with thoughts of playful aggression —
a knee to the back, punches to the arm,
a swing of something ice cold and freezing.
because you couldn’t wrap your arms around his body, or kiss his neck,
or stare into his soul wondering why he was ever possibly staring back at yours.
so — it becomes a reckoning, a shield,
protection from wanting to be too affectionate.
don’t wish // don’t start
don’t kiss // don’t hold // don’t fear
instead
think of your balled fists playfully bouncing off his back, whack-a-mole style,
or…
how you can replace a want to be affectionate with a want to be somewhat childish,
somewhat…other-ish.
the protective skin of not thinking about the displacement of wanting.
I want to kick // I want to fall in.
Sunday, 2 February 2025
I know how to make the bicycle go faster,
without breaking a speed limit,
without skidding forward into the dead-end wall and tearing back the skin on the shin.
in my time in university, I attached myself to a side,
memorising the words to Cathy’s soliloquy
[vengeful, rageful, opposite and unbound]
getting out of one relationship,
going after another [and another]
I knew how to click against the asphalt
how to make third place get a shade more silver,
a shade more golden.
but the supplement limb can come untethered,
unbound,
from the passage of time.
I know how to make the bicycle an imbalanced tricycle like 21st Century’s monster.
professional third wheeler.
when I see the world around me falling in love, settling into an intimacy,
I spasm in my foot to fight back from braking.
when I don’t merely want to sit in the cinema,
watching two wheels do everything without me.
I suddenly don’t know to ride at all.
Tuesday, 4 February 2025
maybe all the world would see it for its lewdness,
a desire to want other people to be comfortable, too,
to be carefree in their bodies the way I am
maybe a want to see more nudity is whorish,
desperate,
some internal mindset to speak for the penis
instead of only having the pleasant conversations,
but I think I like an uncomplicated balance,
we talk about art and how riddled with scum the whole of the earth is,
then trade pictures of ourselves stripped back from restrictions
-- no costumes, no lies, no prohibition.
for me nudity has not become a symbol of wanting to make someone’s eyes
roll back in the sockets.
shirtlessness. clotheslessness.
might make me hot ‘n’ bothered,
yes . . .
might strip back mindless stigma, too.
. . .
you have seen me scantily-clad, almost nude,
seen the innards of my brain fleshed and poked,
danced, dreamed, laughed at,
even cried,
the world is a kooky place and I might yet want to die,
so I thank you,
for looking, smiling, laughing, hurting,
grieving with me.
drink this mug of queertose,
like milk but gayer,
and riddled with self-obsession,
self-criticism,
self-pain, self-regret,
self-wanting-to-kiss-men.
drink this mug o’ queertose
and know you’re better off alive
than dead.











