Note: these are the first four parts of a longish poem I wrote earlier in the year. It explores both heterosexuality and homosexuality. I will perhaps post the other sections of the piece later on.
1
Beside dark flesh, envisaging a physical empire, As the sisters undress and parade amid the colonnades. Somewhere a fountain tumbles its aquatic locks, Splashing on concrete and women's curved backsides.
Lying in the shuttered room, I can taste it, The spray that beads across bronzed, gleaming legs. So pure it's tasteless, but evokes taste nevertheless, In suggesting the taste of the flesh it decorates.
The heat is oppressive, even among the shadows. Sheened with sweat, my naked body trembles slightly. The way the heat trembles over the road outside. A terrible ache transfers from limb to stretched limb.
I laugh quietly to myself, thinking of nothing at all. My penis feels cool and relaxed against my thigh, Unfurled but unaroused, happy to languorously wait. Afternoon sinks into the deeper blue of reflection.
2
A beautiful woman waits by the fountain. Waits for some revelation of man to shatter her, Her cool compose, her emotions behind shades, To make her into the woman she once was.
Her lips are almost pursed, ready to kiss the air, To tease pearls of rain from the moist atmosphere. Her sexuality is stifled between her crossed legs. Lying anaemic in the shadow of her loneliness.
Once she sat astride muscle-bound Adonises. Before the skies of her mind clouded and darkened. The unexpected rape, the rushed abortion . . . She was innocent then, radiant and still immune.
Yes, innocent in her pleasures of the flesh. As innocent as a young child as she screamed out, Feeling the fullness of her conquest inside her, Rejoicing in her climactic peaks of existing.
A beautiful woman waits by the fountain . . .
3
I lie, sprawled on the floor, abandoned to bliss. My penis bends and weeps on my stomach, Like a mother at the grave of a freshly buried son. Pleasure spots and flashes behind closed eyes.
The light gleams over warm collected pools. My stomach a beachscape at low tide, beautiful And melancholy, prostrate and yearning, Nude, alone, till the return of caressing waters.
Sprawled this way for an hour, not thinking, Body cooling down, as the day cools down outside, Shifting into the more sober clothes of evening, Before a stranger makes his way up the steps.
Opening the door, he gazes down at my form, So radiant with beneficence and tender exhaustion. A little chuckle is all, as he reaches for his zip. Softly he laps up the spilt seed, stroking himself.
'What took you so long?' I asked.
4
Down on the beach, night-time revellers, Emerging from their diurnal caves, Stripping off at the shoreline, plunging Into salty water and rippling flesh.
Strange crepuscular flowers blooming, Between men's and women's legs, aroused By the rising moon, by the setting sun. Strange crepuscular flowers shooting . . .
As darkness grows and drips down, Pleasures are found in ever more exotic form. Beings seem to grow from other beings, Limbs twist in impossible directions.
Laid out on the sand, a diagram of ecstasy, Ever shifting, ever multiplying, joints lubricated, A monster of lust, obscenely fertile, writhing, Shoots ephemeral thrills like dazzling fireworks.
This is an epic of desire and deep feelings. Your power to observe and then recount the reflecting desires is very moving.
I am touched by your poetic ability displayed in this piece. Some of the lines are absolutly brilliant!
"Laid out on the sand, a diagram of ecstasy, Ever shifting, ever multiplying, joints lubricated, A monster of lust, obscenely fertile, writhing, Shoots ephemeral thrills like dazzling fireworks"
Many others!!
I don't usually crit. But from our previous discussions, I know that you are hesitant to share your homoerotic work with others. I felt your fear in this poem. So, I thought I'd crit this one for you.
The homosexual encounter seemed a little out of place in this, not for its content, but in your context. You were sharing visions of self and outside forms, then all of a sudden a stranger encounter, then back to the beach scenes. I'd make that other section one on its own, or give it a little more preview and finish. It was a part that just hanged there for a moment.
You are a wonderful writer, with a few too many modifiers (Just like me!!), but you write with a descriptive voice that few can master.
The homo-erotic encounter is explored more in further sections, but it is not the central focus of the work. Each section switches to different scenes. It's like a cinematic short film, or short story, giving a series of impressions which encompasses the whole of sexuality. At the end of the first section the central character is waiting for his 'client' to arrive. Then we switch to a scene outside. Then we return to the character. Then we switch again to outside, where it is night-time. So the outside operates as a timescale of sorts. There is no autobiographical content in the work; and the central character's situation is revealed more in the later sections. He is a bisexual man who has retired in shame from women, and punishes himself by being a kind of cheap whore for male tourists. I ought to say that I'm not reluctant to post homo-erotic poetry because of myself, but because I'm aware other people may not wish to read it.
The homo-erotic encounter is explored more in further sections, but it is not the central focus of the work. Each section switches to different scenes. It's like a cinematic short film, or short story, giving a series of impressions which encompasses the whole of sexuality. At the end of the first section the central character is waiting for his 'client' to arrive. Then we switch to a scene outside. Then we return to the character. Then we switch again to outside, where it is night-time. So the outside operates as a timescale of sorts. There is no autobiographical content in the work; and the central character's situation is revealed more in the later sections. He is a bisexual man who has retired in shame from women, and punishes himself by being a kind of cheap whore for male tourists. I ought to say that I'm not reluctant to post homo-erotic poetry because of myself, but because I'm aware other people may not wish to read it.
It was easy to pick up on the scenes and the movement of the poet's voice. The encounter just seemed to need a little development (IMHO).
Don't worry about what others think of your writing. They cannot and should not control your artistry. We can either choose to read it or not.
Sometimes I prefer glimpses of scenarios, rather than a full description. I like think it stems from my artistic feel, rather than from any self-censorship . . . As I have indeed written graphically of such scenes in other projects. If it was a prose piece, then I probably would have explored the scenes alot more, but I wanted to make things compact and economical. And I wanted to leave a series of impressions, more than anything else.
oh my friend, bravestone, I have to disagree with you! In the first half of this I was taken back to a book by Wilbur Scott, called River God, where a eunic described the lovely princess that he was guardian over, and how even tho' he'd been robbed of his manhood, he still desired her, and found so much beauty there. Then, as the narration turns, it took me to Anne Rice's Cry To Heaven, and the intense flavors of passion and want. I loved the way this reads, very bold, very strong. Kudos. ~Lady Poe
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"..I don't care for your fairytales... - Sara Bareilles
