Daily Quickie

Here is part two of my favorite erotic poem:

2.
One whole day, the servants made our bed.
Rising at dawn, we left the white hotel
to set sail in a yacht on the wide lake.
From dawn until the day began to fade
we sailed in our three-masted white-sailed craft.
Beneath our rug your son's right hand was jammed
up to the wrist inside me, laced in skin.
The sky was blue without a coudy hint.
The white hotel merged into trees. The trees
merged into the horizon of green sea.
I said, Please fuck me, please. Am I too blunt?
I'm not ashamed. It was the murderous sun
But there was a nowhere in the ship to lie
for everywhere there were people drinking wine
and gnawing chicken breasts. They gazed at us
two invalids who never left our rug.
I went into a kind of fever, so
besotted by your son's unresting stroke,
Professor, driving like a piston in
and out, hour after hour. It wasn't till
the sun drew in, that their gaze turned away,
not to the crimson sunset but the blaze
coming from our hotel, again in sight
between the tall pines. It outblazed the sky
-- one wing was burning, and the people rushed
to the ship's prow to stare at it in horror.
So, pulling me upon him without warning,
your son impaled me, it was so sweet I screamed
but no one heard me for the other screams
as body after body fell or leapt
from upper storeys of the white hotel.
I jerked and jerked until his prick released
its cool soft flood. Charred bodies hung from trees,
he grew erect again, again I lunged,
oh I can't tell you how our rapture gushed
the wing was gutted, you could see the beds,
we don't know how it started, someone said
it might have been the unaccustomed sun
driving through our opened curtains, kindling
our still-warm sheets, or (smoking was forbidden)
the maids, tired out, lighting up and drowsing,
or the strong burning-glass, the melting mountain.

I couldn't sleep that night, I was so sore,
I think something inside me had been torn,
your son was tender to me, deep in me
all night, but without moving. Women keened
out on the terrace where the bodies lay,
I don't know if you know the scarlet pain
of women, but I felt the shivers spread
hour after hour as the calm lake sent
dark ripples to the shores. By dawn, we had
not moved apart or slept. Asleep at last
I was the Magdalen, a figure-head
plunging in deep seas. I was impaled
upon a swordfish and I drank the gale,
my wooden skin carved up by time, the wind
of icebergs where the northern lights begin.
The ice was soft at first, a whale who moaned
a lullaby to my corset, the thin bones.
I couldn't tell the wind from the lament
of whales, the hump of white bergs without end.
Then gradually it was the ice itself
cut into me, for we were an ice-breaker,
a breast was sheared away, I felt forsaken,
I gave birth to a wooden embryo
its gaping lips were sucking at the snow
as it was whirled away into the storm,
now turning inside-out the blizzard tore
my womb clean out, I saw it spin into
the whiteness have you seen a flying womb.

You can't imagine the relief it was
to wake and find the sun, already hot,
stroking the furniture with a serene
light, and your son watching me tenderly
I was so happy both my breast were there
I leapt out to the balcony. The air
was balmy with a scent of leaves and pines,
I leaned upon the rail, he came behind
and rammed up into me, he got so far
up into me, my still half-wintry heart
burst into sudden flower, I couldn't tell
which hole it was, I felt the white hotel
and even the mountains start to shake, black forks
sprang into sight where all was white before.

--From The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas