This be the verse

Hah! Look what I found! It's me reading my poem On Erotic Vocabulary, way back in 2015:

It's one of three of mine (with varying degrees of silliness) published in Coming Together in Verse:

Amazon US :: Amazon UK

Shut Out

Illustration by by Florence Harrison, 1910

Poem by Christina Rossetti:

The door was shut. I looked between
Its iron bars; and saw it lie,
My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green:

From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,
From flower to flower the moths and bees;
With all its nests and stately trees
It had been mine, and it was lost.

A shadowless spirit kept the gate,
Blank and unchanging like the grave.
I peering through said: 'Let me have
Some buds to cheer my outcast state.'

He answered not. 'Or give me, then,
But one small twig from shrub or tree;
And bid my home remember me
Until I come to it again.'

The spirit was silent; but he took
Mortar and stone to build a wall;
He left no loophole great or small
Through which my straining eyes might look:

So now I sit here quite alone
Blinded with tears; nor grieve for that,
For nought is left worth looking at
Since my delightful land is gone.

A violet bed is budding near,
Wherein a lark has made her nest:
And good they are, but not the best;
And dear they are, but not so dear.

Vegetable Love

Winter, by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, 1573

My bad poetry posted earlier this week reminded me of an absolute gem of erotic poetry I came across recently:  Robert Herrick's The Vine.

Herrick (1591-1674) was a contemporary of the Metaphysical Poets. I believe the definition of metaphysical poetry boils down to an intense interest in

1) getting laid,
2) forcing metaphors through the hymen of credulity and right up the long and winding vagina of embarrassing crassness (see what I did there?).

Not many modern smutwriters, for example, would stoop to arousing their characters or readers by reminding them that their putrescent vulvas will one day be eaten out by maggots, like Marvell:

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long preserv’d virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust

Or by remarking that they are crawling with fleas, like Donne:

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, 

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be

Anyway, here's Herrick's The Vine, in all its hortiphallic glory:

"I dream'd this mortal part of mine

Was metamorphos’d to a vine;

Which crawling one and every way,

Enthrall’d my dainty Lucia.

Me thought, her long small legs and thighs

I with my tendrils did surprise;

Her belly, buttocks, and her waist

By my soft nerv’lits were embrac’d:

About her head I writhing hung,

And with rich clusters (hid among

The leaves) her temples I behung:

So that my Lucia seem’d to me

Young Bacchus ravisht by his tree.

My curles about her neck did crawl,

And arms and hands they did enthrall:

So that she could not freely stir,

(All parts there made one prisoner).

But when I crept with leaves to hide

Those parts, which maids keep unespy’d,

Such fleeting pleasures there I took,

That with the fancy I awoke;

And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine

More like a stock, then like a vine."

He's got wood, as they say...

Of course, if you like flora-themed sex, there's always this fine collection of suspicious-looking vegetables ;-)

Smut by the Sea 2016

I might have missed Eroticon this year, but I got to Scarborough for Smut by the Sea 2016!

I even got to frolic on the *ahem* beautiful golden sands this time, yay!

Jennifer Denys took this pic

There were of course fabulously smutty readings from fave authors:

Nano Vaslen , Richard V Raiment and Victoria Blisse

Dylan McEwan and K D Grace

And there were workshops on self-publishing (from Anna Sky) and writing Sci Fi (from Jennifer Denys).

Oh, yeah ... and one from me on Writing Fantasy:

Another photo from Jennifer :-)

Then the dapper Jay Coates and the fabulous Bea Noir treated us to the first-ever Dr Scribbly workshop, wherein we were inspired to write things based on Bea's sexy and slightly terrifying burlesque.

And then Hermione ate a lightbulb and hammered a 6-inch nail up her nose...

Here is wot I wrote in response as I came out of shock. I blame Ashley Lister for infecting me with bad poetry:

MetASSmorphosis Spell

I wish my ass was glass

So that Bea would eat it;

I wish my ass was a nose

So that Bea would nail it;

I wish my ass was a chair

So that SuperBea would give a flying fuck

Photo by Nano Vaslen

 I won a prize for that!
IT IS NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!

You have a filthy mind

Thank you Victoria Blisse for another lovely Smut event :-)

Vrubel's Demon

[click to expand pictures - they're worth it]

Demon Seated (1890)

Whilst poking around on t'internet for inspiration for Cover Him with Darkness, I came across the art of Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910). He was a Russian member of the Art Nouveau and Symbolist movements, and though he started off with a lot of religious art, it was eventually a fallen angel that destroyed him ...

Head of a Demon

Vrubel became interested in illustrating a long poem by Lermontov, Tamara and the Demon (full English translation here). In that work a fallen angel, tooling about feeling bored with doing evil stuff, falls in love with Georgian princess Tamara when he espies her dancing at her wedding.

Having no great grasp of either timing or subtlety, the demon has the groom killed and commences nagging / wooing Tamara into becoming his eternal bride.

"Give me thy love - for thee is waiting
Eternal life for earthly span;
For I, in loving as in hating
am great like God, not weak like man."

He's so besotted he even promises to give up evil and obey God for her - and at that point she gives in and lets him kiss her.  

Which kills her on the spot.
Oops.

Demon and Angel with Tamara's Soul

An angel takes Tamara off to heaven, and the poor demon is left to fly over the earth again, lamenting and alone.

Demon Flying

Ah ... That's romance for you ;-)

Demon Overthrown

Vrubel became obsessed with his own particular image of the demon (who you have to admit is pretty damn sexy!). He sculpted and painted the character over and over again.

Demon Flying

He wouldn't stop repainting the face on this one even when it was hanging in the gallery:

DemonProstrate

And at this point he lost it all together and had a total breakdown. Several periods of hospitalization dominated the last few years of his life - it seems to have been tertiary syphilis that caused his insanity and encroaching blindness.

He never painted his Demon again. But he did paint Azrael, the Angel of Death, in 1904:

Six-winged Seraph (Azrael)

He died in 1910.

Full biography and gallery of his paintings here

Blue Monday special - Ashbless reads poetry!

Coming Together: in Verse is out NOW!

Amazon US :: Amazon UK 

A collection of many many NSFW poems - some absolutely filthy, some romantic, some funny, some melancholy, some deep, some that rhyme and some that don't - this anthology is edited by the amazing performance poet Ashley Lister and raises money for Hope for Paws.

BUY IT FOR THE DOGGIES!

As an extra special treat (!) here's me reading out my poem: On Erotic Vocabulary.

POET POWER!

Friday just got Blacker -
Don't be a shopping slacker!
This book by Ashley Lister
Will give you fapping blister(s)
So buy it, not something worse:
Coming Together in Verse! *

We have a release date for Coming Together: in Verse - it's the 27th of November! Black Friday!

The Poets:
Ashley R Lister, Alessia Brio, Victoria Blisse, Rachel Woe, Janine Ashbless, Liz Honeywell, AJ Chilson, Roy Clements, Katy J, Ashe Barker, Lisa Bower, PJ Bayliss, Geneva Rose, Jay Willowbay, Slave Nano, Lily Harlem, Kay Jaybee, KD Grace, Norbert Gora, IG Fredrick, Jade A Waters, Adrea Kore, Bella Settarr, Okami No Koga, Daniel Davis, Joanna Harrington-Cruise, Sophia Sophia, Le Petite Mortimer, Eleanor Meadows, Angell Brooks, L Hollamby, Blacksilk, CA Bell, Ian Jade, Tamsin Flowers, Ruby Red, Colin Davies, Desmond Field, Rachel McGladdery

---

* I can absolutely guarantee that all the book poems are much better than this one.

If you think your writing space is shit...

... you haven't been to Coleridge Cottage in Somerset:

You remember Coleridge of course - he wrote such classic poems as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan...

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

whilst out of his tree on a pharmaceutical mixture of alcohol and opium.

Well he did it, over three years, here:

This is actually the Victorian extended improved version

And I can tell you in no uncertain terms that this place was a fucking hovel.

This was the first parlour. When they had house-guests like William and Dorothy Wordsworth (who stayed for months at a time), those lucky guests slept in here:

This photo slightly exaggerates the size of the room

This was the main parlour where the family lived (Coleridge, wife, children, guests) hung out in the daytime and Coleridge wrote at night:

This was where Sara Coleridge cooked, in the lean-to. There was no oven of course - she had to go down the street to use the bakers' oven like everyone else.

And upstairs the family and their servant girl all slept in one room.

The whole place was overrun with mice, btw. It must have been disgusting. And mind you, this was a respectable middle-class household, quite comfortable by the standards of most people. It wasn't like any of the men were doing manual labour for a living - they wrote poetry and newspaper articles and indulged in long walks on the hills, and generally left any hard work to wives and 12-year-old servant girls.

The cottage had its OWN WELL! Luxury!

Coleridge quite frankly seems to have been a total dick. He left his wife Sara to watch their child Berkeley die at 9 months, and eventually abandoned her; latched on to then fell out with poetic friends with excessive and predictable fervour; sponged off patrons for a living; and left his children "to chance and charity".

He was a piss-poor gardener as well.

But he was a great poet ...

It's a reminder that writing talent, virtue and - apparently - hygiene are in no way connected to one another.

Vice verse

Yes, I'm afraid I've caught poetry :-)

Ashley "The People's Porny Poet" Lister  made me do it. He is totally to blame. He's editing a charity anthology called Coming Together: In Verse (one of the many great Coming Together erotica collections). All proceeds go to Hope for Paws, which is a great animal rescue cause.

And I have poems in it!
I'm sort of shocked, really.

Love the pipe!

THANK YOU ASHLEY!

John Donne and dusted

"Hello Laydeeez ... Let's get poetic!"

The other day I happened to hear an entertaining and stunningly dirty poem read out on BBC Radio Four's Poetry Please. It's by John Donne ( 1572-1631) who is counted as a Metaphysical Poet (which seems to mean he was fond of tortuous and improbable metaphors involving popular science). John "No man is an island" Donne wrote about sex A LOT. Mostly whining that he deserves to get more of it:

"How happy were our sires in ancient time,
Who held plurality of loves no crime."

"Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   
How little that which thou deniest me is;   
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;   
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
    And this, alas, is more than we would do."

The Elegy in question (and I'm not even sure whether it was number 18 or 19, since that seems to vary depending on who you ask), is about ... vulvas. After extensive consideration I can only summarise the message of the poem as "Pussy is JUST AWESOME. In fact it's so good, that when you go down on a woman you should start at her feet instead of wasting time being distracted by her boobs and stuff."

This makes me think his foreplay was a bit shit.  Also the poem ends with a jarring couplet involving a comparison to an enema.

I may not be cut out for poetry, but for those of you on a more elevated plane, here is Elegy XVIII (or XIX). BTW, it might help a bit know that it was held at the time that bear-cubs were born as shapeless blobs and licked into shape by their mothers.

Whoever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.
Love is a bear-whelp born : if we o'er-lick
Our love, and force it new strange shapes to take,
We err, and of a lump a monster make.
Were not a calf a monster, that were grown
Faced like a man, though better than his own ?
Perfection is in unity ; prefer
One woman first, and then one thing in her.
I, when I value gold, may think upon
The ductileness, the application,
The wholesomeness, the ingenuity,
From rust, from soil, from fire ever free ;
But if I love it, 'tis because 'tis made
By our new nature, use, the soul of trade.
All this in women we might think upon,
—If women had them—and yet love but one.
Can men more injure women than to say
They love them for that, by which they're not they ?
Makes virtue woman ? must I cool my blood
Till I both be, and find one wise and good ?
May barren angels love so.   But if we
Make love to woman, virtue is not she,
As beauty is not, nor wealth.   He that strays thus
From her to hers is more adulterous
Than if he took her maid.   Search every sphere
And firmament, our Cupid is not there.
He's an infernal God, and underground
With Pluto dwells, where gold and fire abound.
Men to such gods their sacrificing coals
Did not on altars lay, but pits and holes.
Although we see celestial bodies move
Above the earth, the earth we till and love.
So we her airs contemplate, words and heart,
And virtues, but we love the centric part.
    Nor is the soul more worthy, or more fit
For love, than this, as infinite as it.
But in attaining this desired place
How much they err, that set out at the face ?
The hair a forest is of ambushes,
Of springes, snares, fetters, and manacles ;
The brow becalms us when 'tis smooth and plain,
And when 'tis wrinkled, shipwrecks us again ;
Smooth, 'tis a paradise, where we would have
Immortal stay, but wrinkled 'tis a grave.
The nose, like to the first meridian, runs
Not 'twixt an east and west, but 'twixt two suns ;
It leaves a cheek, a rosy hemisphere,
On either side, and then directs us where
Upon the islands fortunate we fall,
Not faint Canaries, but ambrosial,
Her swelling lips, to which when we are come,
We anchor there, and think ourselves at home,
For they seem all ; there Sirens' songs and there
Wise Delphic oracles do fill the ear.
There, in a creek where chosen pearls do swell,
The remora, her cleaving tongue, doth dwell.
These and the glorious promontory, her chin,
O'erpast, and the straight Hellespont between
The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts,
Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests,
Succeeds a boundless sea, but yet thine eye
Some island moles may scattered there descry ;
And sailing towards her India, in that way
Shall at her fair Atlantic navel stay.
Though there the current be the pilot made,
Yet, ere thou be where thou shouldst be embay'd,
Thou shalt upon another forest set,
Where many shipwreck, and no further get.
When thou art there, consider what this chase
Misspent by thy beginning at the face.
    Rather set out below ; practise thy art ;
Some symmetry the foot hath with that part
Which thou dost seek, and is thy map for that,
Lovely enough to stop, but not stay at.
Least subject to disguise and change it is ; 
Men say the devil never can change his ;
It is the emblem that hath figured
Firmness ; 'tis the first part that comes to bed.
Civility we see refined ; the kiss,
Which at the face began, transplanted is,
Since to the hand, since to the imperial knee,
Now at the papal foot delights to be.
If kings think that the nearer way, and do
Rise from the foot, lovers may do so too ;
For, as free spheres move faster far than can
Birds, whom the air resists, so may that man
Which goes this empty and ethereal way,
Than if at beauty's elements he stay.
Rich Nature in women wisely made
Two purses, and their mouths aversely laid.
They then which to the lower tribute owe,
That way which that exchequer looks must go ;
He which doth not, his error is as great,
As who by clyster gives the stomach meat.