Lovemaking so good she could die June 25, 2013

 

 

I'm revisiting this recent poem not because of its complexity but rather its intense sexuality and how it seems to say something other than what it says on the surface.

 This by far is the most provocative of all the poems she has posted in the year and a half of her current blog and as pointed out in earlier journal entry about this poem she clearly has gotten involved with someone again, an acutely sexual encounter that lacks the emotional appeal the poems she posted earlier this year.

Although she posted a poem earlier about her lust for a man the relationship rapidly evolved into something more than just a physical affair whereas in this poem lust and all its associated sensual experience is at the core.

She seems to focus on the remarkable physical closeness of her latest lover, while apparently also creating distance between them. (something like the poem I wrote about her last year in which I said, “it never gets any better than this,” when it was clear the relationship was already eroding.

This poem is unusual for her in that it expresses a kind of poetry I have not seen from her prior to this or rarely, extremely sensuous when most of her poems tend to fall into a more intellectual vein, full of word play and allusion and clever literary devices.

Earlier this year she posted something close to this emotionally when talking about a moment in the sun, this poem takes that a few steps further into a clear sexual state openly expressing it for the first time.

Who the lucky man she writes about is anybody’s guess. Most likely someone she works with on some level, to whom she has become physically attracted, someone she claims bowed her over to a point where she can’t breathe in a good way, someone she says, “reinfuse me with it, every time you come close to me, every time I hear your voice,” in reality or in her mind, through a doorway in a room, in her ear, or below her when making love, “moaning, growling slightly,” and her breath returns, joining him, pacing with his, screaming out in bursts of never allowed joy (she once claiming she screams a lot when making love.”

Whomever the man is to whom the poem is written appears to be a lucky man to have such powerful verse written on his behalf (or is he?)

Her apparent attachment to him amazes me.

She seems to see that they have a lot in common, how they breathe in the same rhythm.

“The same in and out,” she writers, “After the in and out, of the body and soul” referring to the rhythm of making love yet going beyond this to define the act as something much more significant, “of soul and heart.”

“Or at least mine,” she wrote.

(If all this sounds just a bit too good to be true, I’ll explore that later, needing first to lay out the scenario she has presented in order to make another case.)

She says she watches him as he has oral sex with her, her fingers weaving in his hair, as she shudders against him again and again, clinging to him as if for dear life – that last moment on earth, and she would not – she claims – be upset it the world ended or she died, a variation on the classic cliché about lovemaking being so good she could die.

In an early journal, I raised the question as to whether or not this poem was an attempt to manipulate him, which the language of the poem suggests she is, although does not completely say for what purpose.

The hyperbole continues when she says, “And God, the light, it pierces my brain from my belly where you are,” she writes, strongly suggesting he is making love to her with his mouth between her legs.

She looked down at him, watching his every move, aware of every hair on his head, every curve of his “beautiful face,” and his mouth, his back, his legs, his arms.

Those arms hold her so strongly, she forgets herself, she says.

She holds on tightly, also suggesting that he has commitments elsewhere when she writes: “Knowing you must go, sooner more likely than later,” though she is consumed with the “now,” and his “skin pressed to me, into me,” and his voice vibrating through her whole body.

This will be her last thought, last vision, last smell and last sound, something she will continue to hold onto even when she dies.

As pointed out a few weeks ago when I first wrote about this poem, this smacks of manipulation, over kill, exaggeration to the point of unbelievability.

As said earlier, it is difficult to determine what she hopes to gain by posting this poem, since historically every joy she experiences tends to be temporary, and while she says she is thrilled, the whole affair comes with the linger question of his commitment elsewhere, and this underlying sense that maybe she’s not too upset by his being forced to leave, and has powerful an experience as this is, it is destined to end the way nearly all such experiences have in the past with him going back to live with his wife.

Yet, while she claims she is left with the memory of his having been with her, the exaggerated rhetoric seems to suggest that something else is going on, even when she tells him the affair was so potent its worth having her eventually alone again.

The reality behind the poem suggests something perhaps a little sinister, while she claims having been with him is worth the pain, there is a sense that she has other reasons for saying all that she is saying in this poem, as if she is saying all this for a purpose that has little to do with her desire for him, and perhaps more to do with assuring him she still feels strongly about him, when in fact, the poem suggests something different entirely.

Again, we get the cliché about how good the lovemaking was she could die today, assuring him he is still prominent in her thoughts when she most likely is keeping him happy and in the loop, but has already moved on to someone else.

I’ll explore some of this more tomorrow.

 

 

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