I remember perfectly
the last time I fucked,
it’s easy to do as an observer:
how the body moves,
the muscles flex and relax,
the spine arches,
the ligaments seize,
and the puppet moves.
Almost as if it’s alive,
an artform.
So close to the real thing
only the most observant of lovers
can sense something’s amiss,
a vague and subtle wrongness.
Lips that purse, press to flesh
but carry no spark.
Fluids that smell of
a sterile ocean.
Once more with precision,
if not feeling.
A politeness one learns
after being trapped
in one’s skin too long.
An emotional enema
to sluice out the soul
before getting down
to the messy business
of carnal congress.
This is what grown-ups do,
isn’t it?
I’ve practiced being God,
looking down on the tangle
of limbs and soiled sheets,
convulsions and calm,
a dispassionate view
of the comic things
mortals do in their
weaker moments.
Hard to shift from that perch
and not up the ante.
Now I watch in mute fascination
at how much saliva
a gagged mouth can produce,
as ropes bite into flesh
in unflattering ripples,
leaving patterned indentations
on skin that takes time
to restore its line.
I’m trying to remember what real
feels like.
If you would be so kind
as to play God for me,
perhaps I could learn
to relinquish the position
and recall the sensation
instead of the props
and the composition of
the mise-en-scene.
This borders on the tragic in its stark admission of jadedness and longing. The final stanza is quite an existential twist. A memorable poem.
Thank you for reading, Jim.
It’s beautiful. Capture both the eroticism and art of the act. I love it, and the reaction it
provoked in me.
I ‘ m amazed, I read you in the same way, in prose and poetry and you remind me of Charles Boudelaire when he was asserting in Spleen of París : “ Who had not dream the miracle of the poetical, musical prose, without rhythm, without rhyme, so flexible and contrasted that could be adapted to the lyrics movements of the soul, the undulations of the reverie and the conscience startles?
I adore the earnest tone of some of these lines, such as “I’ve practiced being God/looking down on the tangle/of limbs and soiled sheets”
Gorgeous “I’m trying to remember what real feels like” opens those wounds I think we all have after being disillusioned by life and love. But the final verse wanting to hope that you could feel it again…I adore this!
There is nothing I can type that hasn’t already been said.
It cuts, prods & wounds … the longing it invokes is not enviable. The picture on the other hand is.