The Imperfect Enjoyment

T
Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face.
Her nimble tongue, love’s lesser lightning, played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.
My fluttering soul, sprung with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hovering o’er her balmy brinks of bliss.
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er,
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done ’t:
Her hand, her foot, her very look's a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, “Is there then no more?”
She cries. “All this to love and rapture’s due;
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?”
But I, the most forlorn, lost man alive,
To show my wished obedience vainly strive:
I sigh, alas! and kiss, but cannot swive.
Eager desires confound my first intent,
Succeeding shame does more success prevent,
And rage at last confirms me impotent.
Ev’n her fair hand, which might bid heat return
To frozen age, and make cold hermits burn,
Applied to my dear cinder, warms no more
Than fire to ashes could past flames restore.
Trembling, confused, despairing, limber, dry,
A wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie.
This dart of love, whose piercing point, oft tried,
With virgin blood ten thousand maids has dyed,
Which nature still directed with such art
That it through every cunt reached every heart—
Stiffly resolved, ’twould carelessly invade
Woman or man, nor ought its fury stayed:
Where’er it pierced, a cunt it found or made—
Now languid lies in this unhappy hour,
Shrunk up and sapless like a withered flower.
Thou treacherous, base deserter of my flame,
False to my passion, fatal to my fame,
Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove
So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?
What oyster-cinder-beggar-common whore
Didst thou e’er fail in all thy life before?
When vice, disease, and scandal lead the way,
With what officious haste doest thou obey!
Like a rude, roaring hector in the streets
Who scuffles, cuffs, and justles all he meets,
But if his king or country claim his aid,
The rakehell villain shrinks and hides his head;
Ev’n so thy brutal valor is displayed,
Breaks every stew, does each small whore invade,
But when great Love the onset does command,
Base recreant to thy prince, thou dar’st not stand.
Worst part of me, and henceforth hated most,
Through all the town a common fucking post,
On whom each whore relieves her tingling cunt
As hogs on gates do rub themselves and grunt,
Mayst thou to ravenous chancres be a prey,
Or in consuming weepings waste away;
May strangury and stone thy days attend;
May’st thou never piss, who didst refuse to spend
When all my joys did on false thee depend.
And may ten thousand abler pricks agree
To do the wronged Corinna right for thee.
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

Morning Song and Evening Walk by Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez
1.

Tonite in need of you
and God
I move imperfect
through this ancient city.

Quiet. No one hears
No one feels the tears
of multitudes.
Read Poem
0
157
Rating:

Erinna by Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Was she of spirit race, or was she one
Of earth's least earthly daughters, one to whom
A gift of loveliness and soul is given,
Only to make them wretched?There is an antique gem, on which her brow
Retains its graven beauty even now.
Her hair is braided, but one curl behind
Floats as enamour'd of the summer wind;
The rest is simple. Is she not too fair
Read Poem
0
165
Rating:

The Voyage Home by Philip Appleman
Philip Appleman
The social instincts ...
naturally lead to the golden rule.
—CHARLES DARWIN, The Descent of Man 1
Read Poem
0
128
Rating:

The Little Odyssey of Jason Quint, of Science, Doctor by Thomas McGrath
Thomas McGrath
1.

Betrayed by his five mechanic agents, falling
Captive to consciousness, he summons light
To all its duties, and assumes the world
Like a common penance. Rust on the green tongue burns
Like history’s corrosive on his living tree.
But all the monsters of his sleep’s dark sea
Are tame familiars in the morning sun.
Read Poem
0
123
Rating:

On the Death of Richard West by Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
In vain to me the smiling Mornings shine,
And reddening Phœbus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descant join;
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire;
These ears, alas! for other notes repine,
A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
Read Poem
0
103
Rating:

Laodamia by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
"With sacrifice before the rising morn
Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;
And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required:
Celestial pity I again implore;—
Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!"

So speaking, and by fervent love endowed
With faith, the Suppliant heavenward lifts her hands;
While, like the sun emerging from a cloud,
Her countenance brightens—and her eye expands;
Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature grows;
As she expects the issue in repose.

O terror! what hath she perceived?—O joy!
Read Poem
0
126
Rating:

Fragment 5: Whom should I choose for my Judge? by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Whom should I choose for my Judge? the earnest, impersonal reader,
Who, in the work, forgets me and the world and himself!

Ye who have eyes to detect, and Gall to Chastise the imperfect,
Have you the heart, too, that loves, feels and rewards the Compleat?

What is the meed of thy Song? 'Tis the ceaseless, the thousandfold Echo
Which from the welcoming Hearts of the Pure repeats and prolongs it,
Each with a different Tone, compleat or in musical fragments.

Read Poem
0
89
Rating:

An Essay on Man: Epistle I by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Read Poem
0
114
Rating:

To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison by Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
The Turn

Brave infant of Saguntum, clear
Thy coming forth in that great year,
When the prodigious Hannibal did crown
His rage with razing your immortal town.
Thou, looking then about,
Ere thou wert half got out,
Wise child, didst hastily return,
And mad’st thy mother’s womb thine urn.
How summed a circle didst thou leave mankind
Of deepest lore, could we the center find!

The Counterturn

Read Poem
0
129
Rating:

The Shires by John Fuller
John Fuller
Bedfordshire
A blue bird showing off its undercarriage
En route between our oldest universities
Was observed slightly off-course above Woburn
In the leafy heart of our sleepiest county:
Two cyclists in tandem looked up at the same moment,
Like a busy footnote to its asterisk.

Berkshire
Read Poem
0
140
Rating:

The Third Hour of the Night by Frank Bidart
Frank Bidart
When the eye

When the edgeless screen receiving
light from the edgeless universe

When the eye first

When the edgeless screen facing
outward as if hypnotized by the edgeless universe

When the eye first saw that it

Hungry for more light
Read Poem
0
157
Rating:

The Balustrade by Keith Waldrop
Keith Waldrop
in memory of Edmond Jabès


“And so her worries ran on into the other world.”

The Tale of Genji
Read Poem
0
123
Rating:

from At a Vacation Exercise by John Milton
John Milton
Hail native language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips,
Half unpronounc'd, slide through my infant lips,
Driving dumb Silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sate two years before:
Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee,
I know my tongue but little grace can do thee:
Thou needst not be ambitious to be first,
Believe me I have thither pack'd the worst:
And, if it happen as I did forecast,
The daintest dishes shall be serv'd up last.
I pray thee then deny me not thy aid
Read Poem
0
105
Rating:

The Piano Player Explains Himself by Allen Grossman
Allen Grossman
When the corpse revived at the funeral,
The outraged mourners killed it; and the soul
Of the revenant passed into the body
Of the poet because it had more to say.
He sat down at the piano no one could play
Called Messiah, or The Regulator of the World,
Which had stood for fifty years, to my knowledge,
Beneath a painting of a red-haired woman
Read Poem
0
113
Rating:

The Mauve Notebook by John Ashbery
John Ashbery
“Say it enough times and it's August.”
—Geoffrey G. O'Brien, “Three Years” On a set you need bush rebels,
that numbing little chair while passing.
Read Poem
0
177
Rating:

“The Perfect World” by Kahlil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran
God of lost souls, thou who are lost amongst the gods, hear me:

Gentle Destiny that watchest over us, mad, wandering spirits, hearme:

I dwell in the midst of a perfect race, I the most imperfect.

I, a human chaos, a nebula of confused elements, I move amongstfinished worlds—peoples of complete laws and pure order, whosethoughts are assorted, whose dreams are arranged, and whose visionsare enrolled and registered.

Their virtues, O God, are measured, their sins are weighed, andeven the countless things that pass in the dim twilight of neithersin nor virtue are recorded and catalogued.

Here days and night are divided into seasons of conduct and governedby rules of blameless accuracy.

To eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover one’s nudity, and then to beweary in due time.

To work, to play, to sing, to dance, and then to lie still whenthe clock strikes the hour.

To think thus, to feel thus much, and then to cease thinking andfeeling when a certain star rises above yonder horizon.

To rob a neighbour with a smile, to bestow gifts with a gracefulwave of the hand, to praise prudently, to blame cautiously, todestroy a sound with a word, to burn a body with a breath, and thento wash the hands when the day’s work is done.

To love according to an established order, to entertain one’s bestself in a preconceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly,to intrigue the devils artfully—and then to forget all as thoughmemory were dead.

To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to behappy sweetly, to suffer nobly—and then to empty the cup so thattomorrow may fill it again.

All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born withdetermination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directedby reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method.And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul aremarked and numbered.

It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world ofsupreme wonders, the ripest fruit in God’s garden, the master-thoughtof the universe.

But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilledpassion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, abewildered fragment from a burnt planet?

Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods?
Read Poem
0
215
Rating:

Six Further Studies by Keith Waldrop
Keith Waldrop
I

In heaven there is no more sea, and houses no longer need a widow’s
walk. And no more widows, there being neither marriage nor giving
in marriage. How the air hangs lower and lower on this—I hope
—hottest day of summer. A faintly rotten scent the ground gives off
brings to mind lilacs that have budded and blossomed. There are no
more blossoms, perfume and purple gone for a year, as if forever. In
heaven there are no tears, salt water wiped away entirely. One moment
Read Poem
0
136
Rating:

from The Book of the Dead: The Dam by Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser
All power is saved, having no end. Rises
in the green season, in the sudden season
the white the budded
and the lost.
Water celebrates, yielding continually
sheeted and fast in its overfall
slips down the rock, evades the pillars
building its colonnades, repairs
Read Poem
0
150
Rating:

Yarrow Revisited by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
The gallant Youth, who may have gained,
Or seeks, a "winsome Marrow,"
Was but an Infant in the lap
When first I looked on Yarrow;
Once more, by Newark's Castle-gate
Long left without a warder,
I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee,
Great Minstrel of the Border!
Read Poem
0
135
Rating:

A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist. Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Read Poem
0
133
Rating: