Stillness
sheathed my need,
a gentle sheen
glistened your chest,
and my hands
yearned to reach
sliding my fingers
over your length.
But you beat me
with strokes on
the embonpoint,
tracing my navel
with the tips,
brushing my thighs
with your lips.
A rise of emotion
embodied my fervor
and flowed to surge,
as my mouth dried
limbs began to shake
this was the beginning
of a body quake
An arrow of want
pierced my inner core
I bowed in union,
riding its shaft
I slid into euphoria
with a gentle lift
And all this
was a preamble
the body of its story
has yet to come.
... [into] the oaken box in which the hunted King was secreted....
Capern essayed to descend...
- Elihu Burritt, Walks in the Black Country (1868)
Suppose a poet-postman, full of good Victorian
Embonpoint, should chance to
Step into this house of hiding – a nook unknown to
Questing Roundhead spies – and think to slip
Unseen into the oubliette fitted out
In Cromwell’s days for a king; suppose this very
Poet – more portly in the midriff than Charles
Escaping from his throne – gets caught
Dead-center in the all-too-narrow trap-door gap.
Alas, for all his wriggling, he’s trapped
Longitudinally between floors. What can a poet,
Ill-versed in such historic lore, do but
Taunt the Muses with his long, many-syllabled
Yelps, unrhyming but in vivid metaphor?
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