Erotic Poems Read online

  erotic poems

  erotic poems

  E. E. Cummings

  Edited by

  George James Firmage

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

  NEW YORK LONDON

  Drawings copyright © 2010 by the Trustees of the

  E. E. Cummings Trust.

  Poems copyright © 1923, 1925, 1926, 1931, 1935, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962 by E. E. Cummings; copyright © 1961, 1963, 1966, 1967, 1968 by Marion Morehouse Cummings; copyright © 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust; copyright © 1973, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1991 by George James Firmage.

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce

  selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cummings, E. E. (Edward Estlin), 1894–1962.

  Erotic poems / E.E. Cummings; edited

  by George James Firmage.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-87140-659-0

  1. Erotic poetry, American. I. Firmage, George James. II. Title.

  PS3505.U334E76 2010

  811'.52—dc22

  2009039886

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

  Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

  3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

  erotic poems

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  iii.

  there is a

  moon sole

  in the blue

  night

  amorous of waters

  tremulous,

  blinded with silence the

  undulous heaven yearns where

  in tense starlessness

  anoint with ardor

  the yellow lover

  stands in the dumb dark

  svelte

  and

  urgent

  (again

  love i slowly

  gather

  of thy languorous mouth the

  thrilling

  flower)

  xvi.

  between the breasts

  of bestial

  Marj lie large

  men who praise

  Marj’s cleancornered strokable

  body these men’s

  fingers toss trunks

  shuffle sacks spin kegs they

  curl

  loving

  around

  beers

  the world has

  these men’s hands but their

  bodies big and boozing

  belong to

  Marj

  the greenslim purse of whose

  face opens

  on a fatgold

  grin

  hooray

  hoorah for the large

  men who lie

  between the breasts

  of bestial Marj

  for the strong men

  who

  sleep between the legs of Lil

  xxvii.

  her

  flesh

  Came

  at

  meassandca V

  ingint

  oA

  chute

  i had cement for her,

  merrily

  we became each

  other humped to tumbling

  garble when

  a

  minute

  pulled the sluice

  emerging.

  concrete

  xxviii.

  raise the shade

  will youse dearie?

  rain

  wouldn’t that

  get yer goat but

  we don’t care do

  we dearie we should

  worry about the rain

  huh

  dearie?

  yknow

  i’m

  sorry for awl the

  poor girls that

  gets up god

  knows when every

  day of their

  lives

  aint you,

  oo-oo. dearie

  not so

  hard dear

  you’re killing me

  xi.

  i am going to utter a tree, Nobody

  shall stop me

  but first

  earth , the reckless oral darkness

  raging with thin impulse

  i will have

  a

  dream

  i

  think it shall be roses and

  spring will bring her

  worms rushing through loam.

  (afterward i’ll

  climb

  by tall careful muscles

  into nervous and accurate silence…. But first

  you)

  press easily

  at first, it will be leaves

  and a little harder

  for roses

  only a little harder

  last we

  on the groaning flame of neat huge

  trudging kiss moistly climbing hideously with

  large

  minute

  hips, O

  .press

  worms rushing slowly through loam

  viii.

  irreproachable ladies firmly lewd

  on dangerous slabs of tilting din whose

  mouths distinctly walk

  your smiles accuse

  the dusk with an untimid svelte subdued

  magic

  while in your eyes there lives

  a green egyptian noise. ladies with whom time

  feeds especially his immense lips

  On whose deep nakedness death most believes,

  perpetual girls marching to love

  whose bodies kiss me with the square crime

  of life…. Cecile, the oval shove

  of hiding pleasure. Alice, stinging quips

  of flesh. Loretta, cut the comedy

  kid….

  Fran Mag Glad Dorothy

  ix.

  nearer: breath of my breath: take not thy tingling

  limbs from me: make my pain their crazy meal

  letting thy tigers of smooth sweetness steal

  slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:

  deeper: blood of my blood: with upwardcringing

  swiftness plunge these leopards of white dream

  in the glad flesh of my fear: more neatly ream

  this pith of darkness: carve an evilfringing

  flower of madness on gritted lips

  and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane

  chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.

  Querying greys between mouthed houses curl

  thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane,

  the poetic carcass of a girl

  xi.

  god pity me whom(god distinctly has)

  the weightless svelte drifting sexual feather

  of your shall i say body? follows

  truly through a dribbling moan of jazz

  whose arched occasional steep youth swallows

  curvingly the keenness of my hips;

  or, your first twitch of crisp boy flesh dips

  my height in a firm fragile stinging weather,

  (breathless with sharp necessary lips)kid

  female cracksman of the nifty, ruffian-rogue,

  laughing body with wise breasts half-
grown,

  lisping flesh quick to thread the fattish drone

  of I Want a Doll,

  wispish-agile feet with slid

  steps parting the tousle of saxophonic brogue.

  xvi.

  twentyseven bums give a prostitute the once

  -over. fiftythree(and one would see if it could)

  eyes say the breasts look very good:

  fimlysquirmy with a slight jounce,

  thirteen pants have a hunch

  admit in threedimensional distress

  these hips were made for Horizontal Business

  (set on big legs nice to pinch

  assiduously which justgraze

  each other). As the lady lazily struts

  (her

  thickish flesh superior to the genuine daze

  of unmarketable excitation,

  whose careless movements carefully scatter

  pink propaganda of annihilation

  xviii.

  whereas by dark really released, the modern

  flame of her indomitable body

  uses a careful fierceness. Her lips study

  my head gripping for a decision: burn

  the terrific fingers which grapple and joke

  on my passionate anatomy

  oh yes! Large legs pinch, toes choke—

  hair-thin strands of magic agony

  …. by day this lady in her limousine

  oozes in fashionable traffic, just

  a halfsmile (for society’s sweet sake)

  in the not too frail lips almost discussed;

  between her and ourselves a nearly-opaque

  perfume disinterestedly obscene.

  xix.

  my girl’s tall with hard long eyes

  as she stands, with her long hard hands keeping

  silence on her dress, good for sleeping

  is her long hard body filled with surprise

  like a white shocking wire, when she smiles

  a hard long smile it sometimes makes

  gaily go clean through me tickling aches,

  and the weak noise of her eyes easily files

  my impatience to an edge—my girl’s tall

  and taut, with thin legs just like a vine

  that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall,

  and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed

  with these legs she begins to heave and twine

  about me, and to kiss my face and head.

  xxi.

  life boosts herself rapidly at me

  through sagging debris of exploded day

  the hulking perpendicular mammal

  a

  grim epitome of chuckling flesh.

  Weak thirsty fists of idiot futures bash

  the bragging breasts,

  puppy-faces to mouth

  her ugly nipples squirming in pretty wrath,

  gums skidding on slippery udders

  she

  lifts an impertinent puerperal face

  and with astute fatuous swallowed eyes

  smiles,

  one grin very distinctly wobbles

  from the thinning lips me hugely which embrace.

  as in the hairy notching of clenched thighs

  a friendless dingy female frenzy bubbles

  xiv.

  the ivory performing rose

  of you, worn upon my mind

  all night, quitting only in the unkind

  dawn its muscle amorous

  pricks with minute odour these gross

  days

  when i think of you and do not live:

  and the empty twilight cannot grieve

  nor the autumn, as i grieve, faint for your face

  O stay with me slightly. or until

  with neat obscure obvious hands

  Time stuff the sincere stomach of each mill

  of the ingenious gods. (i am punished.

  They have stolen into recent lands

  the flower

  with their enormous fingers unwished

  xv.

  my naked lady framed

  in twilight is an accident

  whose niceness betters easily the intent

  of genius—

  painting wholly feels ashamed

  before this music, and poetry cannot

  go near because perfectly fearful.

  meanwhile these speak her wonderful

  But i(having in my arms caught

  the picture)hurry it slowly

  to my mouth, taste the accurate demure

  ferocious

  rhythm of

  precise

  laziness. Eat the price

  of an imaginable gesture

  exact warm unholy

  xx.

  you asked me to come: it was raining a little,

  and the spring; a clumsy brightness of air

  wonderfully stumbled above the square,

  little amorous-tadpole people wiggled

  battered by stuttering pearl,

  leaves jiggled

  to the jigging fragrance of newness

  —and then. My crazy fingers liked your dress

  …. your kiss, your kiss was a distinct brittle

  flower, and the flesh crisp set

  my love-tooth on edge. So until light

  each having each we promised to forget—

  wherefore is there nothing left to guess:

  the cheap intelligent thighs, the electric trite

  thighs; the hair stupidly priceless.

  xxii.

  utterly and amusingly i am pash

  possibly because

  .dusk and if it

  perhaps drea-mingly Is(notquite

  trees hugging with the rash,

  coherent light

  )only to trace with

  stiffening slow shrill eyes beyond a fit-

  and-cling of stuffs the alert willing myth

  of body, which will make oddly to strut

  my indolent priceless smile,

  until

  this very frail enormous star(do you see

  it?)and this shall dance upon the nude

  and final silence and shall the

  (i do but touch you)timid lewd

  moon plunge skilfully into the hill.

  xxiv.

  and this day it was Spring…. us

  drew lewdly the murmurous minute clumsy

  smelloftheworld. We intricately

  alive, cleaving the luminous stammer of bodies

  (eagerly just not each other touch)seeking, some

  street which easily tickles a brittle fuss

  of fragile huge humanity….

  Numb

  thoughts, kicking in the rivers of our blood, miss

  by how terrible inches speech—it

  made you a little dizzy did the world’s smell

  (but i was thinking why the girl-and-bird

  of you move…. moves…. and also, i’ll admit—)

  till, at the corner of Nothing and Something, we heard

  a handorgan in twilight playing like hell

  i.

  O It’s Nice To Get Up In, the slipshod mucous kiss

  of her riant belly’s fooling bore

  —When The Sun Begins To(with a phrasing crease

  of hot subliminal lips, as if a score

  of youngest angels suddenly should stretch neat necks

  just to see how always squirms

  the skilful mystery of Hell)me suddenly

  grips in chuckles of supreme sex.

  In The Good Old Summer Time.

  My gorgeous bullet in tickling intuitive flight

  aches, just, simply, into, her. Thirsty

  stirring. (Must be summer. Hush. Worms.)

  But It’s Nicer To Lie In Bed

  —eh? I’m

  not. Again. Hush. God. Please hold. Tight

  ii.

  my strength becoming wistful in a glib

  girl i consider her as a leaf

&nbsp
; thinks

  of the sky, my mind takes to nib

  -bling, of her posture. (As an eye winks).

  and almost i refrain from jumbling her

  flesh whose casual mouth’s coy rooting

  dies also. (my loveFist in her knuckling

  thighs,

  with a sharp indecent stir

  unclenches

  into fingers…. she too is tired.

  Not of me. The eyes which biggish loll

  the hands’ will tumbling into shall

  —and Love ’s a coach with gilt hopeless wheels mired

  where sits rigidly her body’s doll

  gay exactly perishing sexual,

  iii.

  the dirty colours of her kiss have just

  throttled

  my seeing blood, her heart’s chatter

  riveted a weeping skyscraper

  in me

  i bite on the eyes’ brittle crust

  (only feeling the belly’s merry thrust

  Boost my huge passion like a business

  and the Y her legs panting as they press

  proffers its omelet of fluffy lust)

  at six exactly

  the alarm tore

  two slits in her cheeks. A brain peered at the dawn.

  she got up

  with a gashing yellow yawn