in the ambit of flesh and desire

your hands caressing my throat
like it is your own,

gentle but rough,
little by little,
angling to my form and function,
fever-fervent and fastidious,

the calluses of your palm with a tight-
en-ing resolve, recovering spaces
between my hefty breaths,
the carotid pumping faster
                     for relinquishing
                     control over life-lines,

your eyes penetrating
my mind in an inebriated fullness,
the hourglass, broken,
the vagaries of time forgotten
in its absurd arbitrariness,

— i seek you, i need you, i want you —

i want the length of you against the girth
of me, the walls to be torn off, and
the electricity to wreck my anatomy — 
                                   my red lips chapped and bloodied to
                                                            your mouth’s savagery,

pick up my pieces, and claim the night
before it scatters to the winds,
and hum the dirge of this happening,
and moan as if this ache is all that is,
                                   this wound is all that we carve
                                   and draw from each other —

purple-bruised, volt-blue on a soft-brown skin
              merging into the skin of all things,
       submerging into a spell of an age-old
(lost) modus-operandi, for consumption,

                   — death, little by little,
                   living, by dying a little more,
                   and collapsing into heaps of
                   shins and skins, bones and beings,
                   and to forget that it ever existed —

      this venerable malady of sex and grandiosity,
      till loss is the only desire, the only particle
      left of me.


© Anmol Arora 2018

For my Guest Post/Prompt at dVerse to be published later today; I am entreating the poets to explore the idea and theme of desire & sexuality in poetry, especially through the perspectives of gender and sexual minorities.

Also linking it up with the Tuesday Platform at With Real Toads.

Image source (Neck / Livingston, 1988 by Robert Mapplethorpe)

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36 thoughts on “in the ambit of flesh and desire

  1. sanaarizvi says:

    Whoa this is incredibly dark and intense! You desribe the hunger that comes with desire so aptly in this poem with “my red lips chapped and bloodied to your mouth’s savagery/ pick up my pieces, and claim the night before it scatters to the winds” … such palpable feeling of adrenaline rush.. 😯 makes me wonder maybe any glass of water looks irresistible when one is dying of thirst.
    Powerful writing, Anmol ❤️

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  2. This has so much intensity and fire. It captures all of the craving and hits hard at the lustful end of the spectrum without being tasteless. Erotic in the black and white sense and really hot. Loved it!!

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  3. Glenn Buttkus says:

    You penned the perfect illustration for your prompt–something as sensual as the sweaty oder of coitus, yet poetic, tender, punctuated with roughness and urgency, yet bathed in sweetness, then capped with a little death song; quite the achievement.

    Liked by 2 people

  4. Forceful, passionate and full of confidence…Love the ebb and tide of passion and specially this part of life and death:

    — death, little by little,
    living, by dying a little more,
    and collapsing into heaps of
    shins and skins, bones and beings,
    and to forget that it ever existed —

    Thank you for hosting and writing an amazing post at dVerse tonight !!!

    Like

  5. For all the power and passion in this piece there is a sadness of unfulfilment in the narrator’s life with the underlying realisation that despite living his life as he wants he is still not satisfied and will never be.

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  6. I really like the layout of this poem, Anmol, with its ebb and flow, and I love the alliteration of ‘angling to my form and function, / fever-fervent and fastidious’ which evokes the stutter of breath at a lover’s touch. I also like the way the line ‘— i seek you, i need you, i want you —‘ is foregrounded by its separation from the rest of the lines and its punctuation. I also love the use of colour in the lines:
    ‘purple-bruised, volt-blue on a soft-brown skin
    merging into the skin of all things,
    submerging into a spell of an age-old
    (lost) modus-operandi, for consumption’

    and ‘…loss is the only desire, the only particle / left of me’. Wow.

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  7. gripping passion here! something of the narcissist too with that ‘throat
    like it is your own’ but as the,tempo rises, even the echo is lost in the yearning to lose self,
    exceptional lines especially “this venerable malady of sex and grandiosity,”

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  8. Like: venerable malady of sex and grandiosity – I appreciate how you took us to this huge last line , honestly, step by step, bringing us to understanding through the increasing tempo of your imagery. Also that was a wonderful thoughtful post. Thank you.

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  9. your prompt was spectacular! and this poem you write has seduced me with every line and every word. this is a tribute to souls connecting through the simple flesh. something the body just has to express

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  10. Kerry says:

    Grandiosity was a really good word to use in the conclusion. There is something grandiose about a great passion, that is somehow more than ourselves.

    Like

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