The Wine Within the Blood

[Reilley]

Here we were once more,
or was it the first time -
edging the angles,
facing our desires,
locked in an intricate dance.

Drunken sheets and closed blinds,
we giggled into each others flesh
right next to the playground;
the game of night stickball
a soundtrack for sticky-slippery fun,
a long low song above the lee.

“Please…” whispered away from walls,
carried meaning stronger than words.
Melding memories and flesh
to seal over prior scars,
coaxing sweetness from each others breath,
we found humanity in tangled limbs
and bestial rhythms.

Gliding skin and slick licked fingers
held heat between us
with a pulse
that beat two hearts.

You shouted, I roared
and we both gasped
together
finding the wine within the blood
as we drank of each other.

[SweetSilverBird]

Reilley, your graphic images are quite vivid. I suppose the purpose of this is to tweak the reader's prurience? For myself, I am uncomfortable to go this far into sexuality in a poem, but that doesn't mean that someone else shouldn't. You are a braver man than I, Gunga Din!

[heatherwordbender]

I find that neither am I Gunga Din...

Also. I don't know that I would ever conceive of things this way necessarily. Which affects the read, somehow. The structure seems fine, but the rest is sufficiently alien and the subject matter not what I readily read in the poet's stead.

[Reilley]

Ladies, I understand and appreciate that both the subject matter and the point of view are not something that everyone is comfortable with. And I therefore appreciate greatly your commentary.

One of my favorite things about poetry is the ability to paint word pictures that transcend the subject matter. I've tried writing beautiful poems about garbage, murder, infidelity, cancer, and as above, sex. Some work and some don't but I will keep on trying. ;D

[heatherwordbender]

It may or may not be gender related that we have little to say. I think it is likely well constructed and written, but I am a bit too out of my element with it to give you anything more constructive than that.

[diannet]

I like this, I feel you've given yourself a certain freedom with this...(maybe abandon) and you went with it...it's a different style to your others.

I do have a little suggestion and that would be to omit the line..."that beat two hearts" I thought it takes away from that intensity of the moment...just have a read of it without and see what you think... otherwise I think this is great!

[Brigid Briton]

Hiya Reilley,

Hmm, very interesting, I am female and I don't find anything especially alien or unusual about this piece. While it wouldn't be my ideal romantic interlude (stickball as a soundtrack?), (shouting and roaring? sort of reminds me of a lion tamer and lion) I don't find it off-putting (except for the use of the phrase "to seal over prior scars". All scars are prior as they are already sealed over. I think perhaps you were referring to "wounds" rather than scars).

While "The Wine Within the Blood" is a very interesting title, it conjures up Jesus and communion for me. (I guess that would actually be "blood with the wine"). Also, your last verse brought to mind all of the sex-crazed teenage vampires so popular of late).

Other than these distractions, I think this is one of your most honest pieces to date. I applaud you for not rhyming!

[Fire Monkey]

First, I will say that the structure of the poem was in my view good - it did a nice job of holding the thoughts and images. Though I suspect I might not feel quite as alien to the content and presentation, I fear that for me as well, what the poem says did not take me as positively as you might have wanted, but this kind of topic is one which will tend to polarize people within our culture and I am quite certain that if I was to write a poem on the same topic that while each person might react differently to the reactions to your poem, over all there would be just as distinct a split in reactions. This has, to my thinking, a very primal feel behind it whereas I prefer in general a more indirect and gentle feel. But that is all a question of tastes and views - so while I wouldn't count this a favorite poem I will say it is a well written one.

[eiken]

Reilley,
I guess I relate to this from my mother's drinking and noise/shouting etc. but she was thankfully not capable of anything after drinking beyond sleeping it off. My father did not drink and I don't drink alcohol either.
I liked the playfulness in this poem, I did not take it too seriously. I see young kids who are drinking for the first time in this and having a night on the town. There is a very high percentage of young teenage pregnancy in our country, usually from one night stands of drunken (and sometimes drugged) stupors. Sad but the picture I got from this was one of "some" young people who seem to have no value system which saddens me.

[thisismyengland]

Interesting that some of the good people here find this little sex poem to be somewhere beyond the comfort zone. I'm the other way, finding it a little restrained. Somewhere between saying it and not saying it, sex-wise. I can take my sex poems stronger, hotter and with more grubby gamble. For me this is best wherever it's least elusive and where it's most obvious. Different strokes....

[heatherwordbender]

For myself, it was mostly just alien. The difficulty is that there is little comfortable way to discuss the whys and wherefores of that,

[Fire Monkey]

I can't speak for others, but for me it isn't a question of comfort zones - I am not the least bit uncomfortable talking about sex in a very frank manner when it seems appropriate and in that regard I'd say what this describes is mild at best, but it is in part context - I'd far rather deal with such a topic in a less overt way because I feel, in part, that it is better. Past that - I prefer that the raw primal energies in life are focused through a more refined channel - that's all. The poem doesn't make me uncomfortable, it just fails to create what would seem to be the desired response - but that is not to say it is poorly written but rather it doesn't fit with my tastes. Just as I love good Hard Rock but have little interest in even the best Punk.

[Reilley]

The truth is, my first apartment as an adult was right next to the schoolyard where I had played as a child. I worked nights, slept days, so the soundtrack of stick-ball and recess came through my window often. 

And of course, as a young man with newly discovered money and privacy, I was all about getting lovelies to share my space for a time.

This poem was born from those memories.

[Fire Monkey]

That actually does make a lot of sense to me - it creates a sort of blended set of images which are unique to your experiences. If I were to try to create an equivalent poem it would draw on very different memories and images and as a result it would be both very similar and yet very different depending on how one analyzed it.