Today's poem first appeared on the blog in 2016.
When I posted this poem on the blog in 2012, a number of readers contacted me within hours (and in the course of that week) to say they found it offensive. Prior to that, other readers (gay and straight alike) had asked why I had never published a post/poem about S & M although (and I would not deny it, surely?) history testifies that it has always played a part in the human ethos. Surely, I was being discriminatory in failing to address the subject altogether?
‘The practice of S/M is the creation of pleasure. … And that’s why S/M is really a subculture. It’s a process of invention. S/M is the use of a strategic relationship as a source of pleasure.’ – Michel Foucault (1926-84)
I am not into S/ M myself, but neither am I judgemental regarding those in the LGBT community who do indulge for mutual pleasure at one level or another. I find it hard to conceive of anyone wanting to take the practice to extreme levels, but we all have choices. The few people I know (gay or straight) who have indulged in the more moderate forms of S /M insist the experience brings those involved to ‘highs’ comparable with feelings of intense spirituality. I would not know, however, and have no interest in finding out; it is enough for me that I have always found an overwhelming sense of spirituality in my experience of nature.
.
The poem was inspired less by
comments made to me by various S/M enthusiasts than by the works of
French writer Jean Genet (1910-86)
"Jean Genet is an
artist," proclaimed the president of the French Republic in 1948,
pardoning him from a life sentence for repeated burglaries. Jean Genet is
criminal and a pornographer," shrilled all the proper Parisians, promptly
seeing to it that even in Paris Genet's writings for years could be sold only
under the counter.
"Jean Genet is a saint,"
declares Jean-Paul Sartre, high priest of French existentialism.
"I am a pederast. I am a
thief," says Jean Genet. – Time, October 11 1963
AN EXISTENTIAL TAKE ON S/M, THEATRE OF THE SURREAL
Take me to the limits
of endurance, take me to the edge
of your world;
take me to that place
where pain lets the human spirit
feel its whiplash
and metaphor crashes
into a graffiti wall of silence
that even poetry
cannot pretend is anything
but a surrender of sexual integrity
to self-gratification
for lending all the parts
comprising a customised identity
to an alter ego
Learn to shape our selves
at their will and pleasure to
whatever
intention may be
(and, oh, so nebulous motivation)
since we both know there are
desires
to be hauled out of closets
that cannot be exposed
to any human heart, yet need to be
aired
now and then
at the limits of endurance
taken to the very edge of your
world
and mine, where pain
lets us feel its whiplash,
freeing a dark spirit that lies
within
to leap into overdrive
Oh, but sure to crash
into the lonely silence of crude
guilt
for which even poetry
has no expression,
and only a surrender of sexual
integrity
for its own gratification
can start a healing process
likely to mend a broken body on a
wheel,
restore its spirit,
return man or woman
to a gate in The Silence where we
slaves
know the password is pain
and poetry comes
into its own again for
acknowledging
an existential purity
Copyright R. N. Taber 2012; 2016
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