Pickup Poems, Part IV: the End Is Nigh

Well, we seem to be winding down on the beautiful pickup poems, so I think this will be the last list, at least for a while. Many thanks to everyone who sent me their preferences!

In a wonderful shift from the sleazy to the sublime, Spellbound offered this poem by Kenneth Patchen:

As we are so wonderfully done with each other
We can walk into our separate sleep
on floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood
lies

oh my love, my golden lark, my soft long doll
Your lips have splashed my dull house with print of flowers
My hands are crooked where they spilled over your dear
curving

It is good to be weary from that brilliant work
It is being God to feel your breathing under me

A waterglass on the bureau fills with morning.....
Don't let anyone in to wake us


Pickled Olives offered two pieces, both of which were wonderful. The first one hearkens back to "Goblin Market":

Stole:

eating a plum
I tongue the tight skin
drawn seam
that halves this globed
whole is two
it's midnight
but when I bite in
bursting
with wet red flesh
the juice dripping down
my fingers sweet
sticky sticky
sweet pulp
engorged I
fill my mouth
eat it down
eat it down
all the way to the plumbstone

It also reminded me of this one by William Carlos Williams. By the way, I think this is probably the only poem by Williams that I really, truly love:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

Of course, Williams lacks the sexuality of Olives' poem, but the imagery gives me chills. No pun intended.

Olives also offered these lyrics:

Ooh, now let's get down tonight
Baby I'm hot just like an oven
I need some lovin'
And baby, I can't hold it much longer
It's getting stronger and stronger
And when I get that feeling
I want Sexual Healing
Sexual Healing, oh baby
Makes me feel so fine
Helps to relieve my mind
Sexual Healing baby, is good for me
Sexual Healing is something that's good for me
Whenever blue tear drops are falling
And my emotional stability is leaving me
There is something I can do
I can get on the telephone and call you up baby, and
Honey I know you'll be there to relieve me
The love you give to me will free me
If you don't know the things you're dealing
I can tell you, darling, that it's Sexual Healing
Get up, Get up, Get up, Get up, let's make love tonight
Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, 'cos you do it right
Baby I got sick this morning
A sea was storming inside of me
Baby I think I'm capsizing
The waves are rising and rising
And when I get that feeling
I want Sexual Healing
Sexual Healing is good for me
Makes me feel so fine, it's such a rush
Helps to relieve the mind, and it's good for us
Sexual Healing, baby, is good for me
Sexual Healing is something that's good for me
And it's good for me and it's good to me
My baby ohhh
Come take control, just grab a hold
Of my body and mind soon we'll be making it
Honey, oh we're feeling fine
You're my medicine open up and let me in
Darling, you're so great
I can't wait for you to operate
I can't wait for you to operate
When I get this feeling, I need Sexual Healing

I'm not totally sure that she was serious, but God bless Olives! Here's the video:



I thought about putting up a video of George Michael singing the song, but there's a limit to my sense of irony. Besides, GM grosses me out.

Rhapsody offered this wonderful poem. It's not romantic, per se, but definitely puts Marvell in his place:

His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell
by A.D. Hope

Since you have world enough and time
Sir, to admonish me in rhyme,
Pray Mr Marvell, can it be
You think to have persuaded me?
Then let me say: you want the art
To woo, much less to win my heart.
The verse was splendid, all admit,
And, sir, you have a pretty wit.
All that indeed your poem lacked
Was logic, modesty, and tact,
Slight faults and ones to which I own,
Your sex is generally prone;
But though you lose your labour, I
Shall not refuse you a reply:

First, for the language you employ:
A term I deprecate is "coy";
The ill-bred miss, the bird-brained Jill,
May simper and be coy at will;
A lady, sir, as you will find,
Keeps counsel, or she speaks her mind,
Means what she says and scorns to fence
And palter with feigned innocence.

The ambiguous "mistress" next you set
Beside this graceless epithet.
"Coy mistress", sir? Who gave you leave
To wear my heart upon your sleeve?
Or to imply, as sure you do,
I had no other choice than you
And must remain upon the shelf
Unless I should bestir myself?
Shall I be moved to love you, pray,
By hints that I must soon decay?
No woman's won by being told
How quickly she is growing old;
Nor will such ploys, when all is said,
Serve to stampede us into bed.

When from pure blackmail, next you move
To bribe or lure me into love,
No less inept, my rhyming friend,
Snared by the means, you miss your end.
"Times winged chariot", and the rest
As poetry may pass the test;
Readers will quote those lines, I trust,
Till you and I and they are dust;
But I, your destined prey, must look
Less at the bait than at the hook,
Nor, when I do, can fail to see
Just what it is you offer me:
Love on the run, a rough embrace
Snatched in the fury of the chase,
The grave before us and the wheels
Of Time's grim chariot at our heels,
While we, like "am'rous birds of prey",
Tear at each other by the way.

To say the least, the scene you paint
Is, what you call my honour, quaint!
And on this point what prompted you
So crudely, and in public too,
To canvass and , indeed, make free
With my entire anatomy?
Poets have licence, I confess,
To speak of ladies in undress;
Thighs, hearts, brows, breasts are well enough,
In verses this is common stuff;
But -- well I ask: to draw attention
To worms in -- what I blush to mention,
And prate of dust upon it too!
Sir, was this any way to woo?

Now therefore, while male self-regard
Sits on your cheek, my hopeful bard,
May I suggest, before we part,
The best way to a woman's heart
Is to be modest, candid, true;
Tell her you love and show you do;
Neither cajole nor condescend
And base the lover on the friend;
Don't bustle her or fuss or snatch:
A suitor looking at his watch
Is not a posture that persuades
Willing, much less reluctant maids.

Remember that she will be stirred
More by the spirit than the word;
For truth and tenderness do more
Than coruscating metaphor.
Had you addressed me in such terms
And prattled less of graves and worms,
I might, who knows, have warmed to you;
But, as things stand, must bid adieu
(Though I am grateful for the rhyme)
And wish you better luck next time.

Yeats was a particular favorite. Judith offered "Ominous and Rejoiceful yeats to melt and harden the heart." A perfect description:

Never give all the Heart

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost

Judith also offered this one:

Brown Penny

I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

Glamourpuss put forth "When You Are Old" by Yeats. As she said, "I would melt if someone wrote that to me. Sigh."

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I don't know if Yeats is romantic, but he's amazingly beautiful. Once again, thank you all for playing, and I'll leave you with one last poem by Cummings:

somewhere i have never travelled...

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, misteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

The Cavalier Poets (Top Pick-Up Poems of the Seventeenth Century)

A while back, when I posted on Richard Brautigan, Pickled Olives noted that his poetry wasn't very seductive. I, of course, started thinking about poetic seduction, and who would be on my personal mix tape of great poetic seducers.

The problem is that seducing someone with poetry is cheesy. It's hard to imagine a situation in which it would come off well. In fact, the only way that I could imagine it working would be if one were to "ironically" rattle off a few lines of a good, seductive poem. Of course, the gentleman in question would then have to look off in the distance in an incredibly deep, "I am way too multilayered for you" kind of way. Maybe that would work.

Still, what poems would he use? Personally, my vote is for one of the Cavalier or Metaphysical poets. Everyone who's seen Dead Poets Society is familiar with Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" and Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." My personal vote, however, goes to John Donne for "The Flea:"

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd 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 pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.


Seriously, what could be cooler than this poem? Donne is using a bloodsucking parasite to convince a girl to have sex with him. Best of all, he makes a really convincing argument. In some ways, this poem strikes me as a Jackass-type dare. It's easy to imagine Donne hanging out at a local alehouse with a few of his buddies, talking about the most bizarre way to hit on a girl. They're listing improbable things to use--the pox, unclean clothes, an outhouse--when one of them hits on the idea of a flea. Donne, the wild man (this is before he found religion) looks around the table and says, with studied nonchalance, "I could do it." A couple of weeks later, he shows up with this beautiful poem. And everybody buys him a round.

Of course, we don't know if he ever field tested it...

Ben Jonson was another great seduction poet; in fact, he's considered the father of the Cavalier poet tradition. Ironically, he has fallen by the wayside in terms of popularity. Check out his "Song to Celia":

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.

Now, I'm not sure, but I'd be willing to bet that this one would do the trick. It might not even seem cheesy if one were to recite it aloud to the right woman at the right time.

I wonder what has happened to the art of seduction. I once read about how moles reproduce. Apparently, the females mark their tunnels to demonstrate their readiness. Shortly thereafter, the males find them and they commence a hurried, fumbling copulation in the dark, after which they go their separate ways.

Sounds familiar.