Sexual arousal and poetry

[UnderYourSpell]

for pantaloon lovers everywhere

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction.

A petticoat of finest lawn
Scattered lace upon my hem
A sweet disorder in the dress
Revealing under pantaloons.

Neatly hemmed below the knee
Unseen by all but comely eye
Kindles in clothes a wantonness
When modest maiden doth divest.

A camisole still below me lies
Unbuttoned from the décolleté,
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
As all now slips upon the floor.

Tempestuous petticoat of lace
Now thrown aside in disarray
Into a fine distraction
Falls, entangled now in pantaloons.

 

[Esperanza_Hidalgo]

This is a poem that no one read in the heyday of my infamy--it is because it probably sucks, but I like it anyway because it conveys a warm moment when I was falling in love. Painting toenails is so sexy.


She paints . . .

lovely in her innocence,
smelling clean, young, and exciting.
She bites her lower lip in concentration,
sweeping darling blue on my nails.

"To match your eyes," she says.

Caring deeply for the smallest things,
a kitten or lost puppy,
a homeless man on the street,
or a friend in need,
she is simple, kind, and compassionate,
with a depth not always clear.

"You are my joy," she whispers.

How she teases,
touching erotic spots with gentle ease,
finding places that I love,
softly blowing her tender breath on my toes.

"You are my life," she cries.

It is my birthday,
and she is my gift

. . . she paints.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

For me (and her) it seems to work in poems I give to her, somewhat setting the scene for an erotic evening.
I use lots of alliteration:
I lovingly lick my lady’s
luscious lower lips,
lustily lick lots of love liquor.
and so on and on, but certainly no epic.

 

[twelveoone]

/indent]Why is it so (ahem) hard to write poems about sex? .

because the only rhymes I can think of is vex, hex

Found poetry
(haiku)
prism of holes drill'ed
swinging from the chandeliers
Cum here with my finger.


He's getting to close
Finding it hard not to groan
to lift an eyebrow
let alone a leg.

 

[Epmd607]

Sexual arousal has many binary flavors. Tenderness vs. aggression, foreplay vs. penetration, man vs. woman and so on.

Some folks woo women in heat on dance floors, some through comedy and ingenuity at dinner parties. Poetry doesn't deal well with descriptions of aggressive behaviour, penetration; those are better communicated as acts. Prose is better suited for describing sex acts as they are, simple language for the body.

That's why some of us still stand by saying BDSM and general fetish practices, description of sex acts, do not make for good poetry. Not wanting to get back into that discussion. Comedy, double entendre, irony, tender emotions are most suitable and malleable for metaphor, and better suited for inducing sexual arousal in the minds of readers in as few syllables as 140.

Hate, aggression, and instinct are easier to feel than describe. Poetic descriptions of hate and instinct often sound trite, pedantic, or cliche. It's easier disguising love for someone in verse; that's what symbol is made to do, describes an emotion simply(one line metaphor) and still conveys the complexity(a lifetime of attraction)

My favorite poems about sexual arousal and sexual love were surrealist...

 

[UnderYourSpell]

because the only rhymes I can think of is vex, hex

Found poetry
(haiku)
prism of holes drill'ed
swinging from the chandeliers
Cum here with my finger.


He's getting to close
Finding it hard not to groan
to lift an eyebrow
let alone a leg.

hey!!!!!!!!

 

[twelveoone]

hey!!!!!!!!

cento!!!!, if you want I can footnote.
I was careful of copyright restrictions, and if I wasn't, I could always scream parody

 

[UnderYourSpell]

cento!!!!, if you want I can footnote.
I was careful of copyright restrictions, and if I wasn't, I could always scream parody

no no I was 'heying' because I recognised it is all

 

[twelveoone]

no no I was 'heying' because I recognised it is all

I would say I steal from the best, but "Cum here with my finger" well that one needs some work.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I never was very good with erotic poetry for much of the reasons already mentioned. Most submissions feel like a porn film, where if you've not seen one in a while you might be surprised at first, but you're usually bored after 5 minutes. I think it has to do with description vs. metaphor. The mind likes to work at making connections. It's a sex organ, right?

I think humor can work with sex poems, but I don't think then they're erotic. I still remember lawbor ( I think that was the name) on Literotica who wasn't very good at verse but wrote a poem about someone getting carpal tunnel syndrome from masturbating all the time. I nearly fell off my chair when I read it.

My first submission to Literotica, which has been slightly edited since, was one of the few I like to reminisce about sometimes:

Hunt and Gather

He turns the sizzling spit for the men
Who now are friends but would be enemies,
Except the beast was driven from its den.
On other nights who knows? Who dare would tease
Before the fire Neanderthal fear
Of empty stomachs? Barely satisfied,
Some wrestle like their dogs while others spear
More meat and barter bitches for the hide.

But the fire in his mind is Oona where
She sleeps upon their cantilevered stone
With flames of writhing desire that bare
All fur one moon away for him alone
To celebrate despite the danger there
The birth of poetry’s primeval moan.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Sexual arousal has many binary flavors. Tenderness vs. aggression, foreplay vs. penetration, man vs. woman and so on.

Some folks woo women in heat on dance floors, some through comedy and ingenuity at dinner parties. Poetry doesn't deal well with descriptions of aggressive behaviour, penetration; those are better communicated as acts. Prose is better suited for describing sex acts as they are, simple language for the body.

That's why some of us still stand by saying BDSM and general fetish practices, description of sex acts, do not make for good poetry. Not wanting to get back into that discussion. Comedy, double entendre, irony, tender emotions are most suitable and malleable for metaphor, and better suited for inducing sexual arousal in the minds of readers in as few syllables as 140.

Hate, aggression, and instinct are easier to feel than describe. Poetic descriptions of hate and instinct often sound trite, pedantic, or cliche. It's easier disguising love for someone in verse; that's what symbol is made to do, describes an emotion simply(one line metaphor) and still conveys the complexity(a lifetime of attraction)

My favorite poems about sexual arousal and sexual love were surrealist...

Overall, I find much to agree with above, but I think binary misses the mark for most of your flavors. Most have a spectrum of states (all but man vs woman).

 

[vrosej10]

It's almost Valentine's Day and Poet Guy invites you to consider love, or its more common Literotica equivalent—sexual arousal—as a topic for discussion. Being male, he knows that his own arousal can be tripped quite easily with almost no explicit sexual overture by, he hesitates to say, almost any woman. Yes, he is most definitely easy.

But he also notes that most poems here at Literotica that attempt to evoke or discuss sexual arousal or sexual activity do not work very well. They often end up being clichéd, or even simply silly:

He's iron pipe that slams her hole.
She drenches him, juice whipped to spume.
He's frantic now, out of control,
She howls and spouts like a log flume.​

Why is it so (ahem) hard to write poems about sex? Do you have a favorite poem about sex and/or arousal, either by a Literotica poet or by an external poet that you'd like to cite as an example? Do you have any thoughts on why it is difficult to write sexy poems about sex (or thoughts on why you think it is easy, or at least not impossibly difficult)?

Feel free to invoke that Love thing as well, if appropriate.

Poet Guy is off to read some porn. Happy Valentine's Day, all.

The biggest reason I feel it's hard to write decent erotic poetry, is the level of emotional honesty required. If you can't put yourself out there in the poem, its gunna fall flat. I do write a lot of erotic stuff and the best of it comes from real places. An Alba for Him came from a real place.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I would say I steal from the best, but "Cum here with my finger" well that one needs some work.

Uhuh I'd suggest a total rewrite on that one

 

[twelveoone]

Uhuh I'd suggest a total rewrite on that one

is that the one I gave a 75 solely for formatting?

 

[UnderYourSpell]

is that the one I gave a 75 solely for formatting?

I thought that was for them having the guts to submit

 

[bronzeage]

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Hot Biscuits.

Scratch baker girl in a dusty apron.
Shortening and flour, momma, Cut me in
and bathe me in sweet milk
till I squeeze sticky through your fingers.
Brown me top and bottom,
butter and jam
me in your mouth.

 

[butters]

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Hot Biscuits.

Scratch baker girl in a dusty apron.
Shortening and flour, momma, Cut me in
and bathe me in sweet milk
till I squeeze sticky through your fingers.
Brown me top and bottom,
butter and jam
me in your mouth.

oh bloody yum.

read it before but this one bears reading again. and again ...

 

[champagne1982]

Continuing with a food theme... or something

Breathless Metamorphosis

I can't keep my hands still
against the cool linen sheets
instead they stretch
each finger luxuriates
catlike as they press nerves
into sensation.

I can't stop my touch
wandering closer
heat beckons fingertips
with warmth and promises
pleasurable wetness.

My metamorphosis so sudden,
from hand to tongue, the tip
twisting infinity around juicy
sustenance, served on platters
of pelvis and hip. Offered
without reservation and taking
much more.

I don't want my fingers to stop
the pressure; swollen, burst,
splash of scalding heat
over my belly and dripped
along the crease to spill
over into amazing.

You can find this published somewhere.. can't remember. I try to find a way to voice my own experience inside my poetry. Let go of the constraints of good behaviour and arouse yourself, you'll find a bit of healthy wetness and stream of conciousness waiting, I promise. Pardon, I need to visit the restroom now.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

phawwwwwww and other unladylike expressions!

 

[butters]

Neruda

‘Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,’


Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?
Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,
through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:
Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.
Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,
and a genital fire, transformed by delight,
slips through the narrow channels of blood
to precipitate a nocturnal carnation,
to be, and be nothing but light in the dark.

 

[butters]

Neruda

Your Feet

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

 

[butters]

Paul Verlaine
1844-1896

Selected Works
Spring

Tender, the young auburn woman,
By such innocence aroused,
Said to the blonde young girl
These words, in a soft low voice:

'Sap which mounts, and flowers which thrust,
Your childhood is a bower:
Let my fingers wander in the moss
Where glows the rosebud

'Let me among the clean grasses
Drink the drops of dew
Which sprinkle the tender flower, --

'So that pleasure, my dear,
Should brighten your open brow
Like dawn the reluctant blue.'

Her dear rare body, harmonious,
Fragrant, white as white
Rose, whiteness of pure milk, and rosy
As a lily beneath purple skies?

Beauteous thighs, upright breasts,
The back, the loins and belly, feast
For the eyes and prying hands
And for the lips and all the sense

'Little one, let us see if your bed
Has still beneath the red curtain
The beautiful pillow that slips so
And the wild sheets. O to your bed!'

 

[butters]

Craig Raine

Sexual Couplets

Here we are without our clothes,
one excited watering can, one peculiar rose...

My shoe-tree wants to come,
and stretch your body where it lies undone...

I am wearing a shiny sou'wester;
you are coxcombed like a jester...

Oh my strangely gutted one,
the fish head needs your flesh around its bone...

We move in anapestic time and pause,
until my body rhymes with yours...

In the valley of your arse,
all flesh is grass, all flesh is grass...

One damp acorn on the tweedy sod -
then the broad bean dangles in its pod...

 

[butters]

Verlaine's A Thousand and Three

translated by Alistair Elliot



My lovers come, not from the floating classes: they're
Labourers from the depths of suburbs or the land,
Aged fifteen, twenty, with no graces, but an air
Of pretty brutal strength and manners none too grand.

I like them in their work-clothes -- jacket, overalls:
Smelling of pure and simple health, never a whiff
Of scent: their step sounds heavy, yes, but still it falls
Nimbly enough -- they're young, their bounce a little stiff.

Their crafty and wide eyes crackle with cordial
Mischief: the wit of their naively knowing quips
Comes salted with gay swearwords, to be rhythmical,
From their fresh, wholesome mouths and soundly kissing lips;

With energetic knobs and buttockfuls of joy
They can rejoice my arsehole and my cock all night;
By lamplight and at dawn their flesh, all over joy,
Wakes my desire again, tired but still full of fight.

Thighs, hands, and souls, all of me mixed up, memory, feet,
Heart, back and ear and nose and all my ringing guts
Begin to bawl in chorus as they hit the beat,
Reeling and jig-a-jigging in their frenzied ruts:

A crazy dance, a crazy chorus as we're lined
Up, up, divinely rising because hell is high
On heavenly routes: I dance to save myself, and find,
Swimming in sweat, it's in our common breath I fly.

So, my two Charleses: one, young tiger with cat's eyes,
A choirboy with his volume swelling rough and thick;
The other a wild blade so cheeky I surprise
Him only with my dizzy penchant for his prick;

And Odilon, a kid, equipped, though, like a lord:
His feet in love with mine, which rave about their catch --
Those toes! -- though thick and fast the rest of him's adored --
Those feet! -- there's nothing like them! -- even they don't match!

How they caress, so satin cool, with sensitive
Knuckles that stroke the soles and, round the ankles, graze
Over the veiny arch! how these strange kisses give
A sweet soul to this quadruped with soulful ways!

Then Antoine, with that tail of legendary size,
My god, my phallocrat who triumphs from the rear,
Piercing my heart with the blue lightning of his eyes,
My violet arsehole with his terrifying spear;

Paul, a blonde athlete -- pectorals that you could eat! --
A white breast with hard buttons that are sucked as much
As the more juicy end; and Francois, lithe as wheat,
His pecker coiled in that fantastic dancer's crotch;

Auguste, who daily makes himself more masculine
(Oh when it happened first he was a pretty lass!);
Jules, rather whorish with his pallid beauty's skin;
Henri, the marvelous conscript who's gone off, alas! --

I see you all, alone or friends together, some
Unique, some I confuse, a vision of lost love
Clear as my passions who come now, or are to come,
My countless darlings who can never come enough!

 

[butters]

Grace Nichols

Grease


Grease steals in like a lover
over the body of my oven.
Grease kisses the knobs
of my stove.
Grease plays with the small
hands of my spoons.
Grease caresses the skin
of my table-cloth,
getting into every crease.
Grease reassures me that life
is naturally sticky.

Grease is obviously having an affair with me.