"Kiss X"
by Johannes Secundus (1511-1536)
In various Kisses various charms I find,
For changeful fancy loves each changeful kind:
Whene'er with mine thy humid lips unite,
Then humid Kisses with their sweet delight;
From ardent lips so ardent Kisses please,
For glowing transports often spring from these.
What joy! to kiss those eyes that wanton rove,
Then catch the glances of returning love;
Or clinging to the cheek of crimson glow,
The bosom, shoulder, or the neck of snow,
What pleasure! tender passion to assuage,
And see the traces of our am'rous rage
On the soft neck or blooming cheek exprest,
'Twixt yielding lips, in ev'ry thrilling kiss,
To dart the trembling tongue--what matchless bliss!
Inhaling-sweet each other's mingling breath,
While Love lies gasping in the arms of death!
While soul with soul in ecstasy unites,
Intranc'd, impassion'd with the fond delights!
From the receiv'd, or giv'n to thee, my Love!
Alike to me those kisses grateful prove;
The kiss that's rapid, or prolong'd with art,
The fierce, the gentle, equal joys impart.
But mark;--be all my kisses, beauteous Maid!
With diff'rent kisses from thy lips repaid;
Then varying raptures shall from either flow,
As varying kisses either shall bestow:
And let the first, who with an unchang'd kiss
Shall cease to thus diversify the bliss,
Observe, with looks in meek submission dress'd,
That law by which this forfeiture's express'd:
"As many kisses as each lover gave,
"As each might in return again receive,
"so many kisses, from the vanquish'd side,
"The victor claims, so many ways applied."
"Bones"
by Roger Pfingston
Today, dear one, I attempt the impossible:
I’m going to love your bones,
I mean love your bones so they will know
that they’ve been loved, so your flesh
will simmer with jealousy, melt and merge
with your bones, be one with your bones
and know how cold your bones have been
without love. Are you ready? Can we do this?
It may not be easy, it may be that bones
remain without love for their own good,
it may be they can’t withstand
the pressures of love, the infectious heat
of love, it may be that bones can only make it
with the hard mouth of Death. Nevertheless
today I’m going to love your bones,
beginning, of course, with your flesh….
"The Ninth Secret Poem"
by Guillaume Apollinaire
I worship your fleece which is the perfect triangle
Of the Goddess
I am the lumberjack of the only virgin forest
O my Eldorado
I am the only fish in your voluptuous ocean
You my lovely Siren
I am the climber on your snowy mountains
O my whitest Alp
I am the heavenly archer at your beautiful mouth
O my darling quiver
I am the hauler of your midnight hair
O lovely ship on the canal of my kisses
And the lilies of your arms are beckoning me
O my summer garden
The fruits of your breast are ripening their honey for me
O my sweet-smelling orchard
And I am raising you O Madeleine O my beauty above the earth
Like the torch of all light
"The Shape of Brightness"
by Laura K. Gourlay
If I say I helped myself to you
I hope you don't mind,
I couldn't resist;
you were just brilliant flesh--
the shape of brightness, illumined in the light of
half turned louvers that created
painted hills and valleys
with your body.
Deep sienna you were beneath me,
my skin was scorched by your sun ...
I revelled in it;
heard the cicadas
when they made a love song,
tasted the desert sand
when I kissed you,
dreamed dreams of the Serengeti
when you stoked the fire;
and then,
I burned.
"The Smallest Blue Veins"
by Neil Carpathies
In my dreams no one is ever naked
or the slightest bit interested. In yours
Mel Gibson undresses you with his teeth.
I’m never rich or famous but usually
sitting in a chair or eating a bagel.
I do human things like walk down streets,
look in windows, play cards, read a book.
I’m never trapped in an elevator with anyone
but myself while you say last night
you held an umbrella on the high write
dressed like Mata Hari. Maybe I don’t
remember the gems, afraid real life
will be too boring; but how can it be, when
I wake beside you, regardless of what
I’ve dreamed, and see your twisted vines
of hair, corded neck, elegant throat,
each lax muscle of your naked flesh,
pelvic curve as you lie on your side,
and on the pillow, the smallest blue veins
on the back of one of your hands.
"Lightning at Rest"
by Octavio Paz
Sprawled out,
stone made of noon,
half-open eyes in which whiteness becomes blue,
half-ready smile.
Your body rouses; you shake your lion's mane.
Again lying down,
a fine striation of lava in the rock,
a sleeping ray of light.
While you sleep I stroke and polish you,
slim axe,
arrow with whom I set the night on fire.
The sea fighting in the distance with its swords and feathers.
"The Outpouring"
It's the wetness I like.
The way
your pores give birth
to glittering salty beads
that sprout
about your forehead
and run
down your cheeks.
Tiny, clinging waterfalls.
The way their adhesive
yields
as I unwrap you,
each part of your blouse
peeling
like sections of a moist
tomato skin.
The way more beads
grease our kissing bellies,
letting them slap and slide
like rapids on rocks
in a river
pounding its path
to the sea.
- David Meuel
"Bio Logos"
by Molly Peacock
I love your face when we are making love,
like the living stones I was shocked to find
are plants, succulents, members of
a live species, although they look like blind
unblinking pebbles, unleaved, ungreen,
and ungrown. They were as unknown
to me as your face is now beside me
--for
we have gotten outselves in a love koan
as if we were a Japanese print born
up through Western life, torsos aslant, but
legs lifted (will we ever again find
a position so side by side?)
--your brows cut
into angles unknown to me, eyes green
above the brown mouth's living O, a species find.
"On A Night of The Full Moon"
by Audre Lorde
I
Out of my flesh that hungers
and my mouth that knows
comes the shape I am seeking
for reason.
The curve of your waiting body
fits my waiting hand
your breasts warm as sunlight
your lips quick as young birds
between your thighs the sweet
sharp taste of limes
Thus I hold you
frank in my heart's eye
in my skin's knowing
as my fingers conceive your flesh
I feel your stomach
moving against mine
Before the moon wanes again
we shall come together.
II
And I would be the moon
spoken over your beckoning flesh
breaking against reservations
beaching thought
my hands at your high tide
over and under inside you
and the passing of hungers
attended, forgotten.
Darkly risen
the moon speaks
my eyes
judging your roundness
delightful.
"Nesting"
Love outdoors,
and suddenly it is down to
one taut pine needle
flickering between your thumb
and forefinger, one green
point probing my nipple.
You want me to
tell you everything,
what feels which way,
how a nipple responds
deep in the woods
in the dark.
Upon my breast
you are weaving basketry,
holding the pine needle
in your beak as if
you are a tool-using bird.
At last you release it
and encircle
my nipple with your
spiraling tongue
and lips that
form the word
love.
- Abigail Albrecht
"Whaia I Te Po"
by Trudi Paraha
you have swallowed the air
of my desire that wild smell
of it down your thigh was
washed off this morning
before the toast and vegemite
i envisaged sitting round the table
with nipples for breakfast kisses
to my backbone and of course chocolate
did you know your eyes are a
rare breed of green? and how i've gone
mad in the heart for that
sunlicked look of you
e whaiaipo
let's off to bed and play
i want to paint a love poem
over the sheets and you
"Your Tongue"
What a tongue
that comes out
between
your lips.
I would give
whatever you want.
I do speak
your languages:
tongue and groove,
apricot wainscoting,
butter and cream
on the kitchen table,
the one I want to
go under with you.
We will strip off
the tablecloth. We are
magicians. We make
things disappear, then
reappear, disappear then
reappear, all night long.
But this tongue, love,
I have got to have it.
To trace the map
of my body, the inroads,
rugged terrain, back
alleys, wilderness areas.
The tip of your tongue
is the tip of a
world. I want
to see it all.
- Edward Kleinschmidt Mayes
"Descending"
Let me take my tongue
from your mouth,
easing it out
over the red rolling
waves of your lips.
Then, let me
give it back to you,
gliding it
down
into the salty
wet canyon
between your
stiffening peaks,
down
across the tight
trembling plain
that crests and falls
with quickening pace,
down
to the swelling spring
that calls
for its caress
- David Meuel
"Heat In The Body"
by David Watts
I was warming your feet
with my hot breath
when I noticed your thighs
wanted to be kissed.
They were lying close together
like two long necks,
slightly bent. My lips
suckled the lighted horizon
where the leg meets the body,
that sensitive cleft I love to press.
I could smell your aroma
and I remembered the first time
I saw your sex,
how young it appeared,
partly seen, partly imagined
through the light hair that tufted
over it, dusky folds
opening slightly, like moth wings
spreading over moon flower.
"Tell Me"
Tell me what you see,
You ask as I lean
Into the center of your thighs
As though it is possible
To find words for such vision
As though the image of ripe persimmon
Held open and red to the sun
Could capture your fullness.
You want to know what I see
And I stand mute before you
Unable to find metaphor
For a life form so deliciously itself.
I see you, I say
And in that I’m saying
I see the cosmos
Travelling red and pink
Within your glistening skin.
I see atoms magnificently cohered
Into your desire.
I see the very bottom of the ocean,
Warm streams of water hidden there.
I see you, and I’m struck dumb.
There are no words in that part of me
Who joins with you there
My tongue flying blindly
Inside your universe.
- Carolyn Flynn
"I Give You My Tongue"
by Patrick Mulrooney
I give you my tongue,
and the word it has for you,
and the pleasure it has for you
as I speak silently
to your body...
guide me artfully
through the landscape you create with me,
to the nameless, hallowed place
where no words will do.
"Entry June 12"
from This Is My Beloved
by Walter Benton
Sleep late, nobody cares what time it is. Sunday morning, coffee in bed...then love
with coffee flavored kisses. And your tongue dripping honey like a ripe fig.
I have been hours awake looking at you lithely at rest in the free natural way
rivers bed and clouds shape. Your bedgown gathers up your full round thighs, rolls
over your hips. Your breasts are snub like children's faces...and your navel deep
as a god's eye.
Yes, your lips match your teats beautifully, rose and rose. The hair of your arm's
hollow and where your thighs meet agree completely, being brown and soft to look at like
a nest of field mice. Praise be the walls that shelter you from eyes that are not mine!
Love, not prayers shall be our offering this day. We shall praise God with absolute embraces
...our bodies shall sing Him in His own incomparable tongue. Prayer is humbleness, I
cannot be humble with the wealth of you beside me.
"The Butterfly"
by Nikki Giovanni
those things
which you so laughingly call
hands are in fact two
brown butterflies fluttering
across the pleasure
they give
my body
"Afterwards"
by Dorianne Laux
when we sat side by side
on the edge of the unmade bed,
staring blindly at our knees, our feet,
our clothes stranded in the middle of the floor
like small, crumpled islands,
you put your arms around my shoulder
in that gesture usually reserved
for those of the same sex - equals,
friends, as if we’d
accomplished something together,
like climbing a hill or painting a house,
your hand at rest over the curved bone
oh my shoulder, my loud nipped
softening into sleep.
Stripped of our want, our wildness, we sat
naked and tired and companionable
in the sleek silence, innocent
of what we’d said, what we’d done,
our breath slowing, our heads tipped
and touching at the crown,
like a couple of kids
slumped on a dock in the sun, our legs
dangling about the bright water,
admiring each other’s reflections.
“2 AM”
by Dorianne Laux
When I came with you that first time
on the floor of your office, the dirty carpet
under my back, the heel of one foot
propped on your shoulder, I went ahead
and screamed, full-throated, as loud
and as long as my body demanded,
because somewhere, in the back of my mind,
packed in the smallest neurons still capable
of thought, I remembered
we were in a warehouse district
and that no sentient being resided for miles.
Afterwards, when I would unclench
my hands and open my eyes, I looked up.
You were on your knees, your arms
stranded at your sides, so still —
the light from the crooknecked lamp
sculpting each lift and delicate twist,
the lax muscles, the smallest veins
on the backs of your hands. I saw
the ridge of each rib, the blue hollow
pulsing at your throat, all the colors
in your long blunt cut hair which hung
over your face like a raffia curtain
in some south sea island hut.
And as each bright synapse unfurled
and followed its path, I recalled
a story I’d read that explained why women
cry out when they come — that it’s
the call of the conqueror, a siren howl
of possession. So I looked again
and it felt true, your whole body
seemed defeated, owned, having taken on
the aspect of a slave in shackles, the wrists
loosely bound with invisible rope.
And when you finally spoke you didn’t
lift your head but simply moaned the word god
on an exhalation of breath — I knew then
I must be merciful, benevolent,
impossibly kind.
"Alicante"
by Jacques Prevert
An orange upon the table
Your dress on the rug
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Freshness of the night
Warmth of my life.
"In Your Hands"
by Jane Hirshfield
I begin to grow extravagant,
like kudzu,
that rank, green weed
devouring house after house
in the South--
towards mid-day, the roof tiles
start to throw
a wavering light
back toward the sun,
and roads begin to soften,
darken,
taking your wayward tongue,
your legs, your eyes,
home to shuttered windows,
to the cool rooms
that invent themselves
slowly into life.
"I Love It When"
by Sharon Olds
I love it when you roll over
and lie on me in the night, your weight
steady on me as tons of water, my
lungs like a little, shut box,
the firm, haired surface of your legs
opening my legs, my heart swells
to a taut purple boxing glove and then
sometimes I love to lie there doing
nothing, my powerful arms thrown down,
bolts of muslin rippling from the selvage,
your pubic bone a pyramid set
point down on the point of another
—glistening fulcrum. Then, in the stillness,
I love to feel you grow and grow be-
tween my legs like a plant in fast motion
the way, in the auditorium, in the
dark, near the beginning of our lives,
above us, the enormous stems and flowers
unfolded in silence.
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