WACKADOO-DOO

Recently, I found myself chafing in a room full of local poets, listening to poet after poet broadcasting his or her sexual conquests to a bar full of relatively unconscious ears. I wasn't innocent to these goings-on. In the colloquialism of these strange times of literary exhibitionism, such ramblings aren't called rants. Instead, some call them "brags." It's pretty basic, really. When a poet brags, a poet, like a bird in a tree, is establishing territory, breaking in turf, warning off potential rivals in a game of survival-of-the-fittest that is so obvious to me that, half the time at least, I simply manage to forget about it. Lest we all forget, the major imperative for most poets is to "score": Find women, prove to rivals that said rival's sexual potency is less alluring than that of onself.

One poet, a friend of mine, has an annoying habit: He'll succeed in a half-baked sexual conquest--making out like a high-school boy in the parking lot of a barroom dive, whistling out a kiss when a train impedes automotive progress in the middle of a drunken drive homeward--and then he'll broadcast the entire scenario on his blog. The intent is simplistic: He's trying to create an image for himself. Inside, he's a man who's found plenty of compromise in his life to conquer--but he'll have none of that, won't deal with any of it, is content to rebel, rebel, and rebel until, someday, he'll be a white-haired rebel, stunned he's gone nowhere in his life. He may be immodest to a fault, but everyone's been so compassionate to him, he's been badly hurt by a marriage that imploded, is never ashamed to show it, and if any of his antics serve him well, we're happy for him. If he could spell, it might help. If he's ever bothered to read Strunk & Whites "The Elements of Style" or, God forbid, leafed through the Chicago Manual of Style, he certainly hasn't shown it. Though we do note here he believes spelling and punctuation is irrelevant. I hope his spelling and punctuation in bed is better than it is in his testimonies of bed. He even uses Latin phrases to introduce his blog, but he doesn't know any Latin, really; he can barely speak English. We know his short string of sexual conquest is really about his ego--trying to shore up his faulty self-image--and we usually give him a break. But how do the women who've been subjected to what amounts to a network simulcast of his kiss-and-tell routine feel about this? They probably like it--as long as he doesn't mention their names. If I was a woman and some guy wrote about me in lurid detail--the size of my tits, the texture of my skin, how I groaned when he shoved his big hand between my legs--I think I'd blanch. Regardless, we have to examine his audience. They're really not that sophisticated. That sort of exhibitionism in the name of false wisdom and ramshackle poetry is probably a fashion statement that turns some floozies on. Those of us who write simple lyrics about love, expressions of love, for some reason, sometimes end up branded as "dirty old men." What's that all about? Probably more simple posturing.

"One would not mistake true tenderness," the pre-revolutionary Russian poet, the young, mysterious and beautiful Anna Akhmatova, thinking perhaps of the more obvious aspects of tender-trap posturing from a suitor thinking his not-so-sincere advances were subtle and could be mistaken for meaningful, wrote in 1913.

"With anything else, and it is quiet.

In vain you carefully wrap

My shoulders and breast in furs.

And in vain you utter respectful words

About the first love.

How well I know those persistent,

Insatiable glances of yours!"

Consequently, and I was telling a friend all about this one afternoon, the exhibitionism--the old spread-eagled display! display! in the jungleland of a barroom alcove--of for all intents and purposes a silver-back gorilla (I say this affectionately) has made me re-examine my own erotic poetry. I've written plenty of it: But I'm a little old school about my sentiments. A little like the ancient metaphysical poets, I believe that the most important experiences, especially those in the erotic arena, are best expressed by indirection: You make metaphors of the experiences, you stab at the meat, so to speak, obliquely, or, when the experience seems especially sacred, maintain your silence before the eyes of the world. The friend to whom I was speaking, by the way, is quite a gentleman in this respect: He doesn't kiss and tell. His sexual experiences with women--one woman in particular--he keeps a private matter. It's not that he's particularly concerned about embarrassing the woman--she's probably beyond embarrassment about her sex life anyway--it's that he sees erotic experience as a strictly private thing, something best left to the erotic experience itself. He never brags about how he shagged this woman, or teased that woman; no, he keeps his mouth shut. He's quite successful with his women.

"Man, I just think all that exhibitionistic stuff is so ridiculous," I told my friend.

"He's just a boy," my friend replied. "He's living in the way-back machine. Probably got shoved back into the high school hallways of his mind when his wife left him."

"Yeah," I replied. "He's like a big, giant bird: CHIRP!"

"Women would have to be utter fools to fall for that sort of thing. He thinks he's being so subtle."

"CHIRP! CHIRP-CHIRP!"

"By the way," I concluded, "how is she? I really worry about her sometimes. It really hurt when I realized our friendship had hit a dead-end. I'd call her to talk sometimes, she'd pull this dumb game one of her friends taught her and simply not call me back, so I quit calling her. I thought we were way beyond game-playing."

"Well, she's fine," he said. "I think she's really been working too much. Not making enough money either. She had to move--did you know that?"

"Yeah. I found that out by accident. I was trying to get hold of Joey one night and called her old telephone number. Discovered she'd moved. I'm sure she's not particularly happy about being forced to move from her favorite neighborhood to a place far north of where she was. When I called her, she sounded like she was miles away, a little girl really unhappy about certain developments. I felt like just fathering her. Yeah, she's got that hard exterior, but deep inside she's a sensitive and loving woman. But I'm sure you know that."

But I've managed to diverge from my commentary about sexual exhibitionism on the internet, now haven't I? Anyway, after that short conversation, I decided that I, too, could take my sexual conquests, recent and otherwise, and broadcast them to the world--you know, just to improve my "rep," whatever that's supposed to mean. It was quite a laugh-fest when I scrawled a particularly graphic episode of sexual licence, but it turned out fairly well. I wrote my other friend, the great big romeo, thought I'd ask for a little advice on the poem, considering he likes to style himself "the greatest poet of his generation." I thought I could follow in your footsteps, I wrote, or something along those lines, and here's a poem I wrote. Let me know what you think.

Huh? He never responded.

In fact, though the comment and the poem were posted by me on his blog, he, for one reason or another, decided it was perhaps too threatening to his own "rep" to even post it as a comment to one of his blog entries. I started laughing when I discovered his telling omission. I just couldn't help it. After all, I was writing to the great "expert." I was coming to the poetry-god on my knees. What did I get for my little prayer to Don Juan?

He ignored my little CHIRP. How friendly is that?

Well. I've got to respond in some way. I thought I'd use my blog to broadcast this testimony of one of my finest moments with a woman. I'm certain it will accomplish absolutely nothing--poetry is a useless contrivance anyway--but I hope readers who stumble upon this message in a bottle enjoy what they see.

OLDER WOMAN WITH LINCOLN

I'm twenty-five all over again

slim as a silvery new buck knife.

It's Christmas Eve, alone with mom

and her English teacher friend

floating in my childhood home

like three olives in a cocktail

five minutes to the clock chime

watching her friend's restless legs

their nylon sheen shining

as she squeezes her fine thighs

and she's watching me too.

She's suddenly divorced, mom says

too drunk to steer that big car.

Will you drive her home? I'll follow

in the station wagon. Let's get

her home. The woman inclines

to breathe deeply, chest expanding

pressing her girlish breasts hard

against her blouse. She glares

black pupils large in the dim room

small teeth appearing--to bite

her lower lip. You can drive me

can't you? Rising to take her hand

help her rise from her place

I feel her grasp my middle finger

as she collapses against me.

In the cold, the Lincoln starts

me telling her I like the sound of it

when she flattens against my body--

biting my breast? I titter a little

when she tightens her mouth again

slips her hand onto my crotch

and whispers, Merry Christmas.

Driving her home too slowly

I sing a soft carol to the woman

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

as she laughs as I pull inside

a parking spot too tight for Mark V's.

I tell my mom, I'm going to make

certain she's comfortable--be outside

in a moment--as I turn the key

of a deadbolt apartment door lock.

I'm twenty-five, driving a Lincoln

pushing a comely middle-aged woman

against the front door to her home

listening to her yowl like a wildcat

as she perches herself on my shoes

her dress rumpling as I pull it up

and rip a hole in her pantie-hose crotch

my mother waiting in the parking lot

waiting for Santa Claus to come.

O God of Sex! Goddesses of the Erotic! Little muses everywhere! I'm such a man! Applaud to me, admire me from afar, send gestures and smiles to me from your seat in the audience. Oooooh...sooooo...dangerous....! Remember, though: The next one could be about you. And this was such a long, long, long, long poem....And Christi? Sorry about the pantie-hose. Did the excitement you needed after your divorce merit the cost? Mmmmmm...so expensive...so rich...so smooth...tawny...wet nylon...the surface of a deep lake...dappled with rain in the spring...little heart....