Things I Have Masturbated To

Just over a year ago, in May 2011, I listened to Harmony Eichsteadt read pieces from her poetry collection The Meet of My Thighs on the Bedpost Confessions podcast episode 9. One poem in particular caught my attention. Things I Have Masturbated To does exactly what it says on the tin and lists many things Harmony has masturbated to. Before she read it, Harmony said

“It took me about two years to write this book of poetry and it was part creative endeavour and part academic endeavour, and part of what I looked for was what are the things people don’t say, or what are the things that we’re not talking about, about sex, because I really think that when we start talking about them then it starts being okay that we have all the sexuality that we have and I think that then people stop molesting children.”

I agree with Harmony and have been considering her poem ever since I heard it. In light of my recent piece on the lines between fantasy and reality, I thought it was time to pay homage to her work and write my own. She also said that this was one of the hardest poems she’s ever published, and if you listen to her or read it, I think you’ll see why. The same goes for me.

Kissing his pink lips in the morning
Soft and sensual, under the sheet;
Being woken or interrupting his snoring
And the tickling, unintended touch of feet.

Strange hands, put under my skirt to find
That of course I’m bare beneath.
Or watching his face to read his mind
As we walk sexlessly on the heath.

Then animal activities: dog or horse,
And once, weird porn found, squids.
Tentacles are popular, when they force
Inside and you tighten your eyelids.

Ever thought about snakes?

Parents. (Never mine.) Rarely Mummy.
And orgies with brothers and sisters.
Waiting to serve a long long line
Of my real aunts’ misters.

But especially Daddy, when he touches
Whatever he wants, hand over my mouth,
In my childhood room, caught in his clutches.
With his fingers firmly moving south.

Shoes. And boots. Licked tan,
Tasting them. Fucked by the tip.
Worn by a large shouldered man
Bearing a cruel-looking whip.

Your blood, my blood, knives and blades
Or just that time when my slit is bloody.
Masters, servants, emperors, slaves;
Ceremonial, violent, our veins getting muddy.

And as you know, also the waking undead,
Zombies munching flesh and bone.
And those beneath the flower bed,
Cold, lifeless, sea-drenched, gone.

Though I blame Anaïs for that one.

The rigid row of his peg-like smile,
Indents on my flesh, easier to touch than see.
The glint when he told me to run a mile;
It’ll take more than that to frighten me.

Completely, utterly, totally used.
Sometimes bloody, always bruised.

His body. Its hows and its whys.
The swell of his chest or concave of pits.
His feet, his smile, his hair, his thighs!
And cock, of course, and how it sits.

Oh, and hands and hands and hands.
Hair flecked knuckles and broad palms.
The thud and sting and warmth where it lands.
From shoulders and biceps and muscled forearms.

But also girls. Still in my head, though rare,
With curved hips and soft white skin.
Petals for cunts, sometimes hairy, often bare.
Usually voluptuous, some are thin.

Screams. Shouts. Force. Persuasion. Rape.
Tears. Torn clothes. Ripping ragged nails.
In a car park, caught by the law on tape.
Which all, in its violence, merely pales

when compared with his grip on my throat.
Fighting for breath and cries and air,
While with his other hand he wrote
All the names that he calls me, there

on my flesh.
In permanent ink.

His smell! Stale, dirty, rank, worked hard!
Cleaned away with the agile tip of my tongue
Between toes and cheeks, leaving me scarred
When inhaling his filth into my lungs.

Which brings us to the taste of piss.
Not the taste per se, but the submission,
Of being forced, any time, to drink his.
Rarely, nowadays, with my permission.

And you. And me. And me, alone,
Touching me, wet, slippery, as I hiss,
And find my hole, and feel at home
And know I was designed for… this.