Erotic Poetry

Last Friday I wandered into the Melbourne City Library for the first time in my almost two year stay in the fair Victorian Capital.

I was immediately filled with a sense of awe, it looked basically the same as any public library, but it reminded me of that same feeling to be in the presence of so much knowledge, where everyone there is literally learning and studying...ah the days of Uni.

Anyway, I came across a dusty old book entitled only "Erotic Poetry". So I started reading and it was hardly surprising that most of the poems were written by men. As a fellow writer of occasional erotic poetry myself, I could instantly relate to these old codgers.

I thought I might share a nice simple and short one today, this poem is by Raymond Souster born in 1921.

A Bed Without a Woman

A Bed without a woman
Is a thing of wood and springs, a pit
To roll in with the Devil. But let
Her body touch its length and it becomes
A place of singing wonders, eager springboard
To heaven and higher. And you may join her there
In those hours between sleeping and dawn.

Okay so this is an erotic poem by a male, let's try one by a woman, the next poem is by Ruth Stone, who was born in 1915.

Interstices

Pleasure me not, for love's pleasure drained me
Deep as an artesian well;
The pitiless blood-letter veined me
Long grew the parasite before its fill.
Lover, smile the other way not ply me with evil
Who am surfeited and taste the shadows of gray;
Nor sway me with promises to rouse my thirst
And fill me with that passion beyond lust;
Nor romp my body in the wake of the mind's play.

How tired, how enervated, how becalmed I am.
The island towards which I strove in my salt tides
Has drifted out beyond the listless swell and formed
A hostile continent. I am amorphous with all deflowered
brides,
Who, with their floodgates sundered, drowned when they
were stormed.

Okay, so let's try something more modern and I am not claiming for one minute I belong in those books, but this is one I prepared earlier and posted earlier, but I'll re-post it here to save you scouring back through my archives. This is by Josh he was born in 1987.

A taste of Sex

The boy is unsure of the word
To describe the beautiful girl on roller blades

How do you understand the shape of a
Smile she asks him

(the simple play and subtle tongue)
The question is worded on the curve of her
Waist down to her hips
It has a laugh behind it and a
Kind of heat

He imagines the taste of cherry
on her bubblegum lips

(remote and smoldering the tip of the almond heart)

Like the hiss of the waves of an ocean
Vast and unexplored.