My darling, do you not yet see That you, and you alone, Have access to my being That to others is unknown ? My body, dressed in nakedness, This flesh in which I’m sewn Is yours and mine exclusively, With covers slipped and thrown. For if another eyed me Like I love to have you spy me, Then I’d take offence most highly At the violation shown. And if another clutched me, Like I love to have you touch me – Then they importune me muchly In my most forbidden zone. But when that touch is yours, I shall not blush, Nor hold you back, except to slow the rush – Don’t fret you are rebuked if we sometimes must postpone.
No other gets a look-in Once my modesty has flown – To only one I’m willing, And to only one condone. And though it’s never yours to take, But always mine to loan – I choose to lease it full and free, To weave into your own. But should it prove unnerving When my body’s joyful curving Leaves you feeling undeserving, Then allow me to atone – Perhaps you need remindings Of your fingers and their findings As they slip my many bindings, Be they button, lace, or bone. Besides, the sweetest part, in the event Is not the act itself, but the consent. And that I give you gladly – to you and you alone.
This is written with a female voice, incase it wasn’t obvious.
“Mayflies are unique among insects in having a penultimate ‘subimago’ stage which like the adult has wings and can fly, but unlike the adult it has no genitals.”
– Arthropod Quarterly Digest
All throughout each teenage year, I spend my evenings by the brook – In Spring I love to dawdle here To watch the ducks or read a book. I sometimes bring some fishing gear, Though rarely bother with a hook. My friends pair-off in woods or laybys, I, though, spend my time with mayflies.
We are a lot alike, Ephemeroptera. We spent our childhoods trapped within backwater gloom, Just waiting for that feeling that it’s time to bloom – But when we shed our skins and gain our wings, What did we find, Ephemeroptera ? Our flight is drunken and unsteady, Bodies new are strange and heady, Maybe we are not so ready yet, To put away our childhood things. But on it comes: from nymph to fly – To moult, to mate, to lay our eggs, and die.
We’re subimago adolescents, Buzzing with a shared frustration, Trapped within the boring present Waiting for our next gestation – Damn, the urge is so incessant, Yet we cannot reach elation ! Metamorphosis, you cheat, We’re naiads still and incomplete !
I know a lot about Ephemeroptera, These One-Day Wings that flit and dart about the creek. I spend my teenage evenings watching, week by week, While all the while, my classmates grow up too. I ought to leave, Ephemeroptera, I ought to leave, but I’m afraid – I still do not feel fully made. And so I watch you rise and fade, And wonder when my final moult is due. Will I change soon, oh Flies of May ?, To start the years that form my final day.
To expand on the quotation in the epigraph, mayflies are primitive insects that have changed far less than those restless ants and beetles. They show little difference between nymph and adult (well, except that the former lives in water and has no wings), and most bizarrely they have two consecutive flying stages. If you see any other insect with wings, then it is an adult and will never shed it’s exoskeleton or pupate again. Perhaps those giant early griffinflies of the Permian also had two (or more) instars on the wing – they were after all comtemporaries of the first mayflies. Or perhaps it’s a later mutation that avoids having to build both wings and genitls in one hit without the benefit of a lengthy pupation. But given that many species have a subimago stage that lasts a matter of minutes, then clearly the adult cutilcle must develop at the same time as the teenage one, so perhaps this explanation is unlikely.
Anyway, when it is time, the nymph pulls itself out of the water either onto the water tension of the surface, or up some vegetation stalks. There it rests, moults, and dries its cloudy new wings – these already contain the adult wings within them which are revealed when that cloudy outer-covering is shed. In a few species, the females stop here and never make the final moult, while in others the females can survive for a couple of weeks – long enough for their already-gestated eggs to hatch the moment she lays them on the water surface. So in terms of the poem, calling them ‘one-day wings’ might be a little disengenuous – but hell, it’s too good a line to drop ! I used to get irked when people spoke about mayflies living such short lives, when some species can be underwater for two or three years before emerging – but if we consider a ‘mayfly’ to simply be the adult stage, then it’s definitely true for most of them.
A friend though did suggested that I had my metaphor the wrong way about – teenagers aren’t subimagos because they do have the hormones, they just don’t have the transport.
The beds that I’ve slept in, the beds that I’ve known – Each harder than vapour and softer than stone, From four-poster boasters to flea-bitten heaps – I’ve sailed on their billows and sunk in their deeps. From headboards to bedsteads, from duvets to sheets, From brass-knobs to tassels, from casters to pleats, With mattresses lumpy or stuffed to the seams – They each one and ev’ry are beds of my dreams.
But they never will be perfect – They’re close, but they never will. In all my sleeping days alive In which I ply my greatest skill, The bliss of never-knowing five ayem Is never quite as good in them. However much they rest me, They are always second-best – Why climb the hill to Bedfordshire To lie alone atop its crest ? The bed I most desire to keep Is in beside wherever you may sleep.
The beds that I’ve slept in, the beds I’ve called home – To lie down on eiderdown, horsehair and foam. From top-bunk to futon, from hammock to cot, I’ve slept in the worst and the best of the lot. Springs within pockets and springs within springs, From the smallest of cribs to the sizes of kings. A third of our lives is spend under their care, From a bench in a park to the Great Bed of Ware.
One night, I swear I’ll drift away, A hundred years a-snore, And float amid the elves and fay To where no dreamers dare explore, And free my delta-waves to play Where only Nemo came before. Until I’m tossed upon your shore again, To share once more your counterpane. For the perfect place for counting sheep Is right beside wherever you may sleep.
From Penny Blacks to Let It Be, The launch of the National Gallery, The trial and death of Anne Boleyn, And Celtic’s European win. The English Commonwealth declared, And Dracula has readers scared, John Cabot and the Matthew sail, Oscar Wilde and Reading Gaol. The sudden Indian Mutiny, The abolition of slavery, Jenner finds the smallpox fix, And the General Strike of ’26. The Good Friday Accord endorsed, Henry and Katherine get divorced, Pagan rites and Labour Day: All in the glorious month of May.
Behold the very height of spring, When Simon de Montfort topples the king, With Black Narcissus at the flicks, And Big Ben’s clock begins its ticks. Paint it Black is number one, And City of Truro reaches the ton, Joan of Arc gets burned alive, And VE Day in ’45. The restoration of Charlie Two, Everest conquered, and what a view ! The first election where ev’ryone votes, And rescue by the Dunkirk boats. The Crown Jewels pinched while the Tower sleeps, The final entry of Samuel Pepys, The printing of Mrs Dalloway: All in those thirty-one days of May.
I don’t think it would have been possible to even write this poem before Wikipedia !
The trouble with writing poetry is that there are far more writers of it than there are readers. So pity the poor editors of literary journals who actually do have to read the stuff. I can just imagine the brief slump they must experience when opening up my latest submission to find that yet again I have insisted of bloody rhyming. So I thought I’d do the decent thing and punt them all into the cloud out of the way, where only bored googlers and desperate teachers will be in danger of finding them.
(I ought to say that two poetry websites have featured my in the past: Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. Thanks, guys !)
Anyway, I’ll try and upload a new one every few days. Some of them might even be good.
Rhyming Couplets 