“Cold pastoral” —Keats
Enticement is blind,
For enticement,
With its beautiful flame, does not
Count nearly as much as the reason—the goal that’s in the mind.
Do not ask why love belongs to birth, or that breeding
Is fed by the forbidden thrill pornography is feeding;
Fleshy enticement is not meant to offend;
It is enticement only, for a specific end.
You may not participate in lust
Unless you surrender your sanity to beauty and her madness,
Losing all sense of civility and safety and trust.
Look at these prisoners of love;
Can you detect a restlessness and sadness
As they are drawn to pictures and mirrors
Of continual winter: a whirl of candied, perfect flesh,
A lovely storm of pussies and nipples;
These prisoners of love, these cripples,
Know lusty wind isn’t warm; it’s cold; lust always new and fresh,
Forming the perfect model, the writhing statue
Of what they always wanted, and always, in secrecy, knew.
The border between pornography and art confuses you.
It no longer confuses me.
I found a cold, dark mountain pass to invade
Those couples sobbing in the shade,
Who look for love the most, and cry out loud for poetry.
