The Poetry of Sex (12 page)

Live, alive-ho! These bugs! These bugs! Alive!

They’ve leapt between us since we flapped in slime,

jump ship, like pirates, to the brink of Time.

We’re hit. We take in water. They survive.

& here we wait for test results, pretend

to read. You:
What Car?
Me: Holub’s
Selected

which permeates my bones till I’m infected.

Does every rhyme of loins sound out the end?

King Solomon and King David

Led merry merry lives

With many many lady friends

And many many wives;

But when old age crept up on them

With many many qualms,

King Solomon wrote the Proverbs

And King David wrote the Psalms.

Last night’s gladrags transform in daylight.

Crimson lipstick bitten from the very centre

of my mouth leaves a tide line, heart shaped.

These red shoes were never meant for treading

the long path home – kitten heels jack me up

pointing sinwards, downhill as fast as I

can possibly slide. The holes snagged in my tights gape

wide as the mouth of a shocked onlooker, as if your hands

had left prints in a repeating pattern

all over my lower half. Can they tell,

the street sweepers, delivery men and dirty-faced tramps

that I’ve been out all night, mauling hot flesh

When I think of the bodies I ran from.

Throwing myself on the mercy of grass pastures and filthy mattresses.

The springs, the bedsits, the landscape miniatures.

And worst of all, the way they sewed me up like a purse

so I wouldn’t try and get out.

Or in, they couldn’t decide which.

When I think of the bad love.

The girl who lost it again and again on that patch of municipal lawn.

Hot sap running down her thighs.

The girl who held herself at arm’s length all her life.

Who couldn’t bear to look herself in the eye

let alone love.

When I think of the neglect.

The years of untended want gone to waste.

My God. I could go down on my knees and weep.

Weep! like a silent movie heroine bathed in the torchlight of pathos.

And all my starved orifices would form a chorus of sobs

and pourforth, sputtering like outside taps.

Odd how the seemingly maddest of men –

sheer loonies, the classically paranoid

violently possessive about their secrets,

whispered after from corners, terrified

of poison in their coffee, driven frantic

(whether for or against him) by discussion of God

peculiar, to say the least, about their mothers –

return to their gentle senses in bed.

My lovers are not literary types.

They are labourers on building sites.

They build houses and dig drains.

They do not sip champagne.

I want their strong arms to pin me to the bed.

I want them to enjoy me without romance,

simply, the way they take their beer and bread.

I want to make them hard and make them dance.

They do not own a tie or fancy shirts,

or a single suit. Their bodies have an earthy scent

or reek of cheap cologne like Brut.

Their hands are rough and thick, and elegant.

They’re not so hot at grammar, except in bed

where suddenly every word they say is correctly said.

They may not wash sometimes, but breathe me in

as if my skin were made of oxygen.

Her lips were round and full

And to his lap she bent;

He saw no car ahead

And when he came he went.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Lying apart now, each in a separate bed,

He with a book, keeping the light on late,

She like a girl dreaming of childhood,

All men elsewhere – it is as if they wait

Some new event: the book he holds unread,

Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead.

Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion,

How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch,

Or if they do, it is like a confession

Of having little feeling – or too much.

Chastity faces them, a destination

For which their whole lives were a preparation.

Ancient person, for whom I,

All the flattering youth defy;

Long be it e’er thou grow old,

Aching, shaking, crazy cold.

But still continue as thou art,

Ancient person of my heart.

On thy withered lips and dry,

Which like barren furrows lye;

Brooding kisses I will pour,

Shall thy youthful heat restore.

Such kind showers in autumn fall,

And a second spring recall:

Nor from thee will ever part,

Ancient person of my heart.

You whom I never loved,

You I have never touched

Live in my mind as if you proved

A thesis about other such,

Which is, that firm and tender flesh

Is medicine for an ageing man,

As if one body could refresh

Another as it never can.

The crook of age, the spring of youth,

Are equally the work of time;

What is in common is the truth

That age is age and prime is prime

And that both quickly slip away

To other hours, or none at all:

Whatever words the ghosts may say

It is the bodies take the fall.

Pretence may entertain the old,

The young may answer with a lie

But neither old nor young can hold

The same illusion till they die.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

Youth and beauty have left me

    a full packet of cigarettes

and this balcony. Time redecorates

    my home as a reliquary.

The camera loved me once,

    as everyone loves a young woman

of spirit who toys with men

    and uses her natural elegance

to get what she wants. Siren

    or ingénue, whatever they asked of me

I exuded ‘a carefree, naive sexuality’,

    the critics said. Dominique, is that Dorian

Mick Jagger’s penis is pleased to meet you.

Mick Jagger’s penis is the John Lennon’s penis

of penises. Also, the Steven Tyler scarf collection

of penises, the David Lee Roth midair crotch thrust,

the Gene Simmons codpiece, the Axl Rose attitude of penises.

This is a lot of pressure for a penis,

big shoes for a penis to fill. Mick Jagger’s penis

doesn’t ask for much, these days. Mick Jagger’s penis

is strongly influenced by the blues and knows

whom this song is about. There are two versions

of Mick Jagger’s penis: the one the world sees

and the one that lies awake at night

and worries it has let someone down.

Sometimes it wants to be remembered,

to leave its mark on the world, it wants

to be more than footnote, punchline, punching bag.

Sometimes it just wants to be held.

It grows weary of everything having two meanings.

If you ask Mick Jagger’s penis about its dreams,

it will tell you about a certain lightning storm

over a certain lake – which means

nothing more or nothing less than what it was:

the dark water, the sky splitting open.

If you are lucky

you will carry one night with you

for the rest of your life,

a night like no other.

You won’t see it coming.

Forget the day, the year.

It will arrive uninvoked,

an astrological anomaly.

You will remember

how every cell in your body

knew him, this stranger,

how you held your breath,

the way you searched his face.

This is how such evenings begin.

And you will be real in your skin,

bone and sinew; the way you always thought

you could be. Effortlessly.

This is how you will fit together.

His parted lips between your thighs,

your half-lit nipples darkening,

the hot-breathed arrival of desire,

the frenzied coupling

as you opened soundlessly

and the world flooded into you.

In the morning, maybe,

soon after sunrise

you will walk barefoot above a waterfall in the forest,

light-headed with the smell of sex,

laughing in your déshabillé.