Journal and Story: Unbidden Fruit

Twenty odd years after our first rainy afternoon together in a single wide mobile home northeast of a small city in Colorado, said refuge part of a short row of such homes at a boarding stable, so that we had met in the course of horse matters--

Twenty odd years after the three spent as a couple in and out of love, the sap flowing, so that I am 64 and he is 71, today he caressed me, driving me mad with his long fingers over my breasts until I took his hand down and shamelessly begged for it--we have connected or begun to connect or want to connect in the flesh again.

Or is it only I who craves it? Who is to say and how can we tell...My fears have a powerful collective voice beneath how thrilled I really am.

For I have longed for and lived for this man for all of this time, sometimes distracting myself with other people but always homing to him.  He has been my rock and broad shoulder.

What has happened to him in the twenty years includes a breakdown over a Hemingway short story which became a colossal unmanning, the end of a teaching career, other things I am not part of in his story.

Sometimes the truth isn't evident.  Sometimes it presents itself unbidden.

His touch was sublime and erotic and delicious because I have longed for him and I have maintained a private auto-erotic life so that I know my capacities..Until today and a bit of our yesterday, I have not been made love to in seven years.

But where I wore a top easy to send the twin explorers of the hands beneath, and guided his hands and fingers to my breasts and nipples,  he wouldn't take off a single article of clothing, not the boots he had been wearing to deal with two feet of snow, not the new Levis that hug his still apple-muscled buttocks, not the plaid shirt with long sleeves over the t-shirt--beneath which I have felt his still -strong arms. It would not be for hours that I realized how this affected me, although I did ask him, and ask him why, hungering for us to be skin to skin.

There was no point in telling him that it is all such a surprise to my body and being that I couldn't just let go with him and scratch the stars, or that after he left I fit a silky new condom over my objet du plaisir, broke out the new bottle of Astroglide--I had given him some to take home--and for the second time in twenty-four hours, slid that facsimile of him into myself with estrogen cream on the end to try to undo the atrophy within me.

 Or that alone, relieved of the pressure to be beautiful and exciting, I was able to be those things unto myself as has been the case for so long..  While I circled and massaged my clitoris I could pulse and grip that which was within me and sate all of my hunger when I came.

 While he caressed my breasts and sent me into orbit so that I pulsed in the hollow and became softened and wet, I kissed him, breathing my gasps into his ear, his hair. Kissing him everywhere but the mouth for now, wanting him to want me, needing him to want me as I want him--needing him to want and need my touch just as I crave his.

I cannot kiss him like a lover because in my despair at my life and what happened to me in 07 I had given up on my teeth, on my beauty.  I have needed to recover from being shamed by dentists about being afraid, and needed to overcome my own fear.

Fear and Satan are synonymous, are they not?  He, on the other hand, my lover, doesn't have that fear; he has other ones, and beautiful strong teeth..  And that he has taken a step toward me, touching me and wanting to give me pleasure seem miraculous to me.

We each have things to take care of; he came to me and said he would see the doctor although my Rx is that we take a little more time.

I had a lover years ago with whom there had been a long saga of joy and pain.  After a two year separation during which I married and divorced, he came out to see me, all the way from Minnesota, on the bus.  He was a Puerto Rican and Italian attorney, and he was the great love of my thirties, seventeen years older than I.  He came to me out of the dream of the past and the thicket of complications of the present, and when we lay down together, he came into my arms and whispered to me, "I am yours."

I was a child in a woman's body then.  Those words terrified me.  But how I crave them now and how deathly hard it is to hold out for what you deserve after years of selling yourself out.

I have sustained my relationship with my beautiful Texan for twenty-three years. I feel so badly for us, for the things that have befallen us.  Pick a category of disaster.  He had two small strokes three years ago I saw him through, sluicing him off in the shower and calling the ambulance.

When I fell from a horse and fractured my leg he was there. And in rehab, when the leg collapsed later and they said they would have to re-break it and I fled, so that I live with a half-usable leg.

We have forgiven each other a host of things--his calling the police for a stand-by to get his things and their throwing me in jail.  My loss of my temper and putting dents in everything-- especially his trust.

But--but-- the exulting voice reiterates: his fingers moved over your breasts at last, and you pulsed and clenched and sang his name within yourself, aching and needing..  He said he would see about a testosterone supplement.  He said he would see about the little blue pills men his age take. He said he would "work on" taking off the shoes, the socks, the jeans, the belt, the shirt.

And I am afraid.  I am afraid of more heartache and more impossibility, here in the deeps of the night alone in my apartment with my dog and blanching a plethora of free vine ripe tomatoes for the freezer.

So here we are then, the woman, comely, who won't smile because it betrays her self-neglect, who has said she will get the horrid stones in her mouth, her means of self-torture pulled and asked him if a bridge would turn him off.  He said it wouldn't.  But she already said, you will not kiss me when I have this.  We will not kiss, not full on the mouth, though I sterilize it four times a day.

The woman,  who if they do lie together as men and women are meant to lie together,  will put the always swollen, painful right leg out of the way on a pillow, the leg that for years was the one a lover lay on in the face to face position, that worked so well-- and she will put the left over his shoulder and he will have access to the gates of paradise and she will soothe and rub the bird's head while its wings pulse..

And the man, who has known only three women, in all of the years.  Who came out of the Bible Belt with a passion for books and flying, and the West, and horses, and beautiful women.  Who is invisibly held back by a belt of fear around his loins and heart that we perhaps have an opportunity to loosen and slip off together.

For as should be the theme of a poet who is burning down like a cheap match, we are running out of time.  We have an allotment of days, mere hours of rapture and living to join company with the bees, the singing things of the early spring, that searching onion tendril in the kitchen that has gone looking for the light.

I think I will die of rapture when he is within me; I have said as gently and lightly as I could, that it is about being filled by him, that deep and delicious filling we crave.  Can you imagine loving a man and not having that from him, all this time?

Persephone has been released from Hades and has rained down upon Gaia and the Spring and the heart sings, aches and trembles with fear that the bouquet lying on her bed is an illusion.

Prega per noi....tu che legge questi parole...

Croce Delizio... Hunger for Pleasure

This post is a bit of a technical foray into my past, and I wrote it with the hope that it might be useful and or enlightening.  This is not to say there aren't many, many men who "get it", are attuned to their lovers and put a woman's pleasure first.  It's only a fragment of my experience.  xj 

"Yes.  I will.  Yes..."  Molly Bloom's Soliloquy, Ulysses, James Joyce.

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,

Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

I Knew a Woman-- Theodore Roethke



I can think of nothing as wonderful and mystical as coming with your lover, eyes to eyes, body to body.I've now had this experience in the bathroom of a train boiling down the Italian coast, on a rock on the Maine Coast at high noon, on the floor, the couch, the kitchen table.   I have been lucky to have four or five lovers over the years I taught my favorite position/technique  to, who never shamed me or found it strange and who loved the results of their "work."

Believe me, I had years of frustration before my forays into passion.  Years ago a friend  I had confided in finally referred me to her ex-boyfriend, who made love to me this way:  he came into me and then we lay on our sides-- he was within me, and began to massage me where it counted, where it counts for most women if you believe the stats..

I was stunned-- I had become very frustrated with first one partner then the other, thinking something was wrong with me.  I loved our time together, but was too shy to let go.  However, I worked up my courage and showed my next lover what felt good.  Same thing; on our sides, not moving much but pulsing within me, massaging me.  

One of my lovers, a poet from another country, came back into my life years after our first relationship and we made love with the afternoon sun streaming into my apartment. I could feel how important my pleasure was for him.  We were in the missionary clench; he reached down and caressed me while inside me.  For we women, this is heaven.  You have only to look at the diagram below to understand why.  We want to be filled, but the clitoris needs to be wholly, fully involved.

Women are afraid to tell their men what they are longing for-- afraid still, after all these years of feminism, gaining equality and independence-- still worried about unmanning their partners.  I never wanted a lovemaking session to turn into an anatomy lesson.  And, although this will sound like generalizing, the field of sane and giving men narrows as you age.  There are plenty of bees buzzing around the honey pot who want to test drive their fertility with just about anyone.  But good lover material?  Not so much.

Now, at 62, I am gratefully alone.  I've made peace with my solitude and that it means I'm  free of the pressure to please my partner, the worry and stress of wondering whether he is happy.  I've begun to explore my body all over again.  I learned some surprising things.  Gentle pressure and building permits the lovely orchid of flesh that is the clitoris to engorge and become responsive and hungry.  You can't expect your body to go from 0 to mach 10-- you have to take responsibility for your own pleasure and really turn yourself on.  In all of my  years of sexual activity I subordinated my pleasure to my lover's in order to keep him, make him feel like a total stud muffin.  I thereby cheated both of us and I am not alone in telling little lies.

After a few minutes of teasing and savoring the building of desire, getting yourself to the point of starving for it, it happens as naturally as a cloud burst and so intensely it is almost painful. Women therefore, get their version of an erection and in any intimacy that needs to be a priority. And what a shock to feel it all getting better as I age.

More than ever, I'm convinced that the best thing a man can do for his lover is to ask her what she likes and let her show him.  We always assume we know what to do.  Women are as hungry as men.  Imagine a man trying to come without an erection-- we women for years have been trying to force ourselves to get there without doing the right things or asking for them.

There isn't much info online about combining penetration and clitoral stimulation.  It takes so much trust to make ourselves vulnerable.  But out of that vulnerability comes joy, fulfillment, release.  I have cried tears of gratitude and joy in a lover's arms in the past.  I want anyone suffering with confusion in this department to know that there are solutions.  Rock on, love on.  Weigh in.   The sketch below shows the complex, fascinating orchid in all her glory.  Read and weep...xxxj

Re-posting, from Eve Rises Up, by yours truly:

I come wet, singing with the sin of it

to tell you

That more than you have imagined

I have a Cock of my own

Between my legs

Under its pretty prepuce

A delicate white falcon under its hood

A nub of love that fills with blood

With petals running beneath the skin

A sensate arbor for the wines of desire

A cock of my own with its sensate head

A bird with long red wings

Between my legs

So that in rewriting the writ

For the sake of the Clit

I spread you out

Like a corpse taken down

From the Cross

I oil your torso

I slide over your length

With my strong little bird

I rise over your mouth

I nudge against your lip

I am far away from the snake

Between your legs that beats

With blood--

The one-eyed watchman in the watch tower

The python among the apples.

 I ride your mouth

With the little goddess in the boat

And when I've pleased 

my little briny dove

And tears bead from my flesh

And I know the petite morte

Is at the base of my spine

Eyes to eyes,

Mouth to mouth--

I let you nudge into me

I let you in inch

By inch

We move at my direction

I say barely move in me

And that is what I mean

You know nothing

You never knew anything

I am your Maestra

You are my schoolboy

I am your Priestess

You are my Penitent

And when I crest and burn

And pull you through me

And you feel my trembling

And my fever sets you on fire

Manchild in the Promised Land

We together in the Kingdom of Fuck

A thousand angels dancing

On the Clit’s soft head

Your fingers coaxing

The fevered dove’s head

  

Then, I’ll let you in

Boiling over

To the root

The love-sword in the hilt

You little boy Adam,

With your Weeping King Cock

In the wet spent sea-flower of my Love.

cc

A fitting caption:  "there's much much more to me than meets the eye...."

Eve Rises Up, Revised

I have revised the poem I view as one of my best, most honest efforts.

Eve Rises Up

For an eternity and longer

Have I knelt at the altar of Cock

Have I bowed down to the white worm

Beneath the loin cloth 

 Have I swaddled it in the satin hive

Of my warmth

The holy cavern of my body

Have I cooed to it

Laving it like a troubled dove

Have I bound my feet before it

Have I strummed it with my tongue

Like a Lyre

Have I let it come searching and bleeding

White gall into my mouth

Stopping thought and word.

For forty years—think of it

A nun in the chancel of Cock

In the Kingdom of Cock

According to the Bible of Fuck

The holy writ according to the Father

Eve shall know not of her own body

And put herself

At the mercy of the Cock.

  

ii

Now I tell you

I decapitate you

As my Head of State

As the Chancellor of my Desire.

I come wet, singing with the sin of it

to tell you

That more than you have imagined

I have a Cock of my own

Between my legs

Under its pretty prepuce

A delicate white falcon under its hood

A nub of love that fills with blood

With petals running beneath the skin

A sensate arbor for the wines of desire

A cock of my own with its sensate head

A bird with long red wings

Between my legs

So that in rewriting the writ

For the sake of the Clit

I spread you out

Like a corpse taken down

From the Cross

I oil your torso

I slide over your length

With my strong little bird

I rise over your mouth

I nudge against your lip

I am far away from the snake

Between your legs that beats

With blood--

The one-eyed watchman in the watch tower

The python among the apples.

 I ride your mouth

With the little goddess in the boat

And when I've pleased 

my little briny dove

And tears bead from my flesh

And I know the petite morte

Is at the base of my spine

Eyes to eyes,

Mouth to mouth--

I let you nudge into me

I let you in inch

By inch

We move at my direction

I say barely move in me

And that is what I mean

You know nothing

You never knew anything

I am your Maestra

You are my schoolboy

I am your Priestess

You are my Penitent

And when I crest and burn

And pull you through me

And you feel my trembling

And my fever sets you on fire

Manchild in the Promised Land

We together in the Kingdom of Fuck

A thousand angels dancing

On the Clit’s soft head

Your fingers coaxing

The fevered dove’s head

  

Then, I’ll let you in

Boiling over

To the root

The love-sword in the hilt

You little boy Adam,

With your Weeping King Cock

In the wet spent sea-flower of my Love.

cc

copyright Jenne' Andrews 2011

New Poem Toward the Rapture of Women, Fulfillment of the Both

Eve Rises Up

I come wet, singing with the sin of it

to tell you

That more than you have imagined

I have a Cock of my own

Between my legs

Under its pretty prepuce

A delicate white falcon under its hood

A nub of love that fills with blood

With petals running beneath the skin

A sensate arbor for the wines of desire

A cock of my own with its sensate head

A bird with long red wings

Between my legs

So that in rewriting the writ

For the sake of the Clit

I spread you out

Like a corpse taken down

From the Cross

I oil your torso

I slide over your length

With my strong little bird

I rise over your mouth

I nudge against your lip

I am far away from the snake

Between your legs that beats

With blood--

The one-eyed watchman in the watch tower

The python among the apples.

 I ride your mouth

With the little goddess in the boat

And when I've pleased 
my little briny dove

And tears bead from my flesh

And I know the petite morte

Is at the base of my spine

Eyes to eyes,

Mouth to mouth--

I let you nudge into me

I let you in inch

By inch

We move at my direction

I say barely move in me

And that is what I mean

You know nothing

You never knew anything

I am your Maestra

You are my schoolboy

I am your Priestess

You are my Penitent

And when I crest and burn

And pull you through me

And you feel my trembling

And my fever sets you on fire

Manchild in the Promised Land

We together in the Kingdom of Fuck

A thousand angels dancing

On the Clit’s soft head

Your fingers coaxing

The fevered dove’s head

  

Then, I’ll let you in

Boiling over

To the root

The love-sword in the hilt

You little boy Adam,

With your Weeping King Cock

In the wet spent sea-flower of my Love.

cc

copyright Jenne' Andrews 2011

In Celebration of the Body...

Poppy, Georgia O'Keeffe-- reposted via Net Fair Use copyright exemption

Ode to the Mound of Venus

I have found my sacred flower

Is that not the tumescent aching of her heart

She undoes me with her shameless power

She undoes me with her untamed power

She pulses, moistens, plays a burning part

O taste and see this brazen flower

I knew little of my hungry bel fior

I had no blueprint for the art

Now I have found a secret pleasure for les heures.

I have found a secret pleasure for the hours

Touching her,  ecstatic waters part

O marvel at my brazen flower.

I adore my honeyed bel fior

She blooms by swelling in the dark

I break a sweat from her bien sur, 

The red wet slaking of her heart.

# # #

Alternative version below, closer to a classic villanelle--?

Ode to the Mound of Venus  ii

 I have found my sacred flower

Is that not the tumescent aching of her heart?

She undoes me with her shameless power.

I have found a secret pleasure for the hours

She pulses, moistens, plays a burning part

I have found my sacred flower.

The poppy’s taste is  sweet and sour

I had no blueprint for the art

She undoes me with her shameless power.

She torments me in my untamed hours

She pulses, moistens, quivers like a hart

I have found my sacred flower

She tickles me pink within her bower

Touching her, ecstatic waters part

She undoes me with her shameless power

There’s no time to spruce up in the shower

She blooms by swelling in the dark

I have found my sacred flower

She stuns me with her shameless power. 

.

copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2011

all rights reserved....

.

copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2011

all rights reserved.... 

Also posted at La Parola Vivace per One Stop Challenge...

And here we are...

On the threshold of a small project that could do good things for those of us who spontaneously write rich, sensual poetry.  I'll be looking for good stuff that's funny, tender, poignant-- and that sings.  Don't be offended if I make a few suggestions.  My idea for the blog thus far is that it become a focal point for a writing community with similar interests-- those that are uplifted, made to laugh, and inspired by work of this orientation.