The Poetry of Sex (4 page)

I feel I could be turned to ice

If this goes on, if this goes on.

I feel I could be buried twice

And still the death not yet be done.

I feel I could be turned to fire

If there can be no end to this.

I know within me such desire

No kiss could satisfy, no kiss.

I feel I could be turned to stone,

A solid block not carved at all,

Because I feel so much alone.

I could be grave-stone or a wall.

From the office where he’d been taken on

to fill a position that was trivial and poorly paid

(eight pounds a month, including bonus) –

he emerged as soon as he’d finished the dreary tasks

that kept him bent over his desk all afternoon.

At seven he came out and began to stroll

slowly down the street. He was handsome

in an interesting way, with the look of a man

who had reached the peak of his sensual potential.

He’d turned twenty-nine a month before.

He dawdled along the street, then down

the shabby alleys that led to his apartment.

As he passed a little shop that sold cheap

imitation goods for workmen,

inside he saw a face, a physique

that urged him on, and in he walked,

inquiring about some coloured handkerchiefs.

He asked about the quality of the handkerchiefs

and what they cost; his voice

breaking, almost stifled by desire.

The answers came back in the same tone,

distracted, the low timbre

suggesting veiled consent.

They went on talking about the merchandise –

but their sole aim was for their hands to touch

over the handkerchiefs, for their faces,

their lips, as if by chance, to brush against each other:

for some momentary contact of the flesh.

Swiftly and in secret, so that the shop owner,

seated at the back, would never notice.

Avocados were somewhere on the lust-list

we made sated on the floor of room 404.

Write down
, you said,
write down every wicked

little dirty thing you’d like us to try.
I pitted

the felt-tip against my teeth, then whispered:

I want you to carefully split a ripe avocado,

loosen its pip, scoop out the warm yellowy

flesh and squeeze it to a gentle pulp, then –

… & when I fail to focus, when I tire,

he rises like a Christ newly baptised

in sky-blue trunks, reminding me desire

will always lie in wait & be disguised

as men with healing hands & cute-cruel lips

& arms I’d die for should they ever press

too hard against my throat.

               When water drips

from him the fish swim to his feet, confess

how happily waylaid they are, congeal

in spasmic foil &, even then, mouth how

the breeding pools upstream are no big deal.

A friend of mine asked me if I’d sleep with Daniel Craig,

would I make love to him or kick him out of bed?

Before I have time to answer, I’m in bed with Daniel Craig.

He’s stirring out of sleep, smelling of Tobacco Vanille,

he flatters my performance, asks if I’d like coffee.

‘Hang on,’ I say, ‘I did not sleep with you, Daniel Craig,

this is just a conversational frolic.’ My friend stands

in the corner of my bedroom, ‘You’ve gone too far,’ she says.

I’m pulling the duvet away from his Hollywood body

at exactly the moment my husband enters the room.

I say, ‘Yes, this is exactly what it looks like, darling,

but it’s hypothetical, a mere conversational frolic.’

He’s threatening me. There are lawyers in the room.

My children begin to cry. I don’t even like Daniel Craig.

It’s too late. The sheets are full of secreted evidence.

There are forensics in the room, covering my body

in blue powder, checking my skin for finger prints:

they match Daniel Craig’s. He doesn’t even know

he’s slept with me. My marriage is a dead gull.

My neighbours come into the room shaking heads

oh dear oh dear oh dear. My husband has drawn lists

of all the things he wants to keep: a plasma screen,

an Xbox, a collection of muesli-coloured pebbles

from our holidays in Truro, ‘When you loved me!’

he snaps. My children will see a therapist after school.

Daniel Craig is naked in a hypothetical sense,

telling me we can make this work. My friend smirks

behind a celebrity magazine featuring lurid details

of our affair. There are photos. We are on a beach

in the Dominican Republic, healthy and tanned

both kicking sand at a playful Joan Collins.

When you find me wanting

is it because I cry

at children’s films –

how Bambi’s mother

always dies and E. T.

always goes home?

Or because I never know

which way is North

or why it matters –

losing myself

in the thrill of uncertainty?

Is it my wanton honesty,

my wilful ignorance

or how I scoff

at boundaries –

regarding hedgerows

and faux-pas

with equal equanimity?

Or maybe you don’t like

my singing, the way

my lungs squeeze

each note flat.

But know this:

I dream in perfect pitch –

your hands on my breasts

your lips on my thighs

my breath on your skin

my blood beating time with yours.

Who were those young men dancing?

And why were they dancing with you?

And what was the meaning of all that business

around the area of the pelvis, both pelvises,

I mean, since I saw you with two of them –

two men, that is, with one pelvis each.

Though there is your pelvis too, to reckon with.

It made quite a show of itself out there

on the dance floor. Not to be overlooked

nor slighted in any way, sticking like a magnet

to the erratic rhythms of those young men,

their jeans curving and cupping and making

promises in all directions of things to come.

Which way to go, you must have asked yourself

a dozen times at least, as the young man

with the smile turned this way, and the

young man with the dreamy eyes turned that,

and you were dazed, in circles, spinning

this way and that way, brushing up against them

in confusion, body parts in gentle friction

sliding back and forth, nearly seeming like

you hadn’t meant to do it.

Did you mean to do it?

A tall gent waits

inside the playground

not looking at any one child

but rather mostly

at the dog-dark door

of the public lavs

and the shadows

pooling within.

I wish I could enjoy

forging sandcastles with you

and your two-year-old,

filling the lime-green bucket,

packing it down

with the luminous shovel …

only now this man is

watching me –

he’s caught me

amongst the families,

caught me trying to play daddy.

His gaze is iron-heavy

as he walks

to the lavatory door,

pauses, like he were crossing a road,

then enters …

In one version of the poem I

follow him in, slide up next to the cistern.

He bolts the grimy cubicle door

behind us. Unzips my jeans.

In another I stay building with your daughter,

perfecting the castle’s keep, the last place to be breached

in a siege. In another I’m disgusted by these queers

who hang around toilets trying to catch my eye.

In another I am your husband – I yearn to leave

our daughter alone for just a handful of minutes –

she’d be fine out here – knowing there is more love

for me in there, with him.

Body, remember not only how deeply you were loved,

not only the many beds where you lay,

but also those desires that flashed

openly in their eyes

or trembled in the voice – and were thwarted

by some chance impediment.

Now that all of them are locked away in the past,

it almost seems as if you surrendered

to even those pre-empted desires – how they flashed, remember,

in the eyes of those who looked at you, how they trembled

in the voice for you, remember, body.

Wishing, wondering, thinking, talking,

Is it Medicine? Is it Smarties?

Difficult, like tightrope walking?

Easy, like a broken heart is?

Where the sea along the shore moans,

Hear the humming of the hormones,

Messages of meeting, parting,

Is it worth the grief of starting?

Can the sweets outweigh the sours?

Love & Sex & Boys in Showers.

Suppose I let him go too far, but

Just how far is that precisely?

Suppose we do it in the car, but

After will he treat me nicely?

Everything I want’s illicit,

Adult, sexually explicit.

When he stuns me with his kisses,

Sweet as Sugar, bold as Bliss is,

Will I savour them for hours?

Love & Sex & Boys in Showers.

Steamy dreams of saltlick shoulders,

Peach-fuzz thighs and silky bottom.

Hearts have reasons. They’re as old as

Time. I swear I think I’ve got ’em.

Shy and shyer, fond and fonder,

There, where ocean meets blue yonder,

Skinnydips on desert island,

Wisechild wideness of his smile and

Lotus blossoms, passion flowers,

Love & Sex & Boys in Showers.