Never Reaching the End

[underthewronghat]

I heard she grew up to marry
a short glass of white milk kind of guy,
but back then she was in my arms:
pink tulip skin, edible nipples
She would rub her curls against my neck,
slurp small beads of sweat from my nose

When words failed us,
we spoke only in vowels:

ahhh, you
ohhh, you

The Moody Blues had nothing
we never heard before

Howdy 71.  Not sure of the reference for your name.  Is it a standard for "room temperature?"

Anyway, I'm going to agree with Shem a little.  I think this poem has a great ending with the Moody Blues reference, but as such, I think it wants to swing away from being pornographic.  But the sighs in sex are what you are comparing to the Moody Blues, and we get the connection.  I like the move from words to vowels to the Moody Blues.  I mean, we can all hear "The Nights in white Satin," ringing at the end.  The experience exceeds artistic rhapsody, and I think this poem wants to mark the limits of poetry and the inability of music to reach such heights, more than try to out-do the Moody Blues in talking about love and sex.  As such, I think this poem has to walk a fine line.  I think you want to maybe avoid the "edible" nipples, as it's slightly too sexual and overpowers the poem to some degree.  This creates a problem.

You can be very plain-Jane physical, and just pick some less-gratuitous aspects of sex to mark (ie. the sweat).  OR...
You can move toward being very poetic about euphemizing sex.

I think the second option moves toward trying to out-do The Moody Blues.  So I think you have set up your poem to offer us the feeling correctly.  We want to feel that art can approach, but not replace the experience --we want to feel the thinness of the canvas as it were.  My advice is to just avoid the nipples entirely --nipples are too awesome, and I don't think you can succeed in underplaying them to keep the focus you have at the end.  You might could get away with a more simple word like "breasts," but I still think it would be difficult.  I mean there aren't a lot of images preceding the nipples, so they really stand out (pardon the double entendre).  I think if you want to try to keep them, you might have to wedge them in with some other strong or otherwise competitive images --which might work.  A little more physicality to set a sort of high mark that British Rock, for all its energy and innovation, still can't reach.

I get the "eww" that Shem gives you over the "slurping sweat."  Musically it's great diction, so you almost get away with it, but I think "slurping" is like you maybe had some extra soda straws in bed, and you're sweating buckets.  Now the image, itself, I think it hits the mark.  Kissing all over while being sweaty.  That works for me.  Again, it's such a fine line.  Anyway, I think Shem and I parts ways over The Moody Blues.  I'm happy admitting that this is a poem aimed at an audience who have listened to and appreciate The Moody Blues.  I think that's fine for the poet to aim at a potentially esoteric reference.  It took me several years to bump into Sylvia Plath's reference to "the Greek necessity" in her Poem, "Edge."  I found it in Plato's Socrates.  I get that my education is sort of catching up to what Sylvia's was at the time she wrote it, and I'm happy to admit my ignorance because I know that she's in control, and she's pointing me toward other works.  She's raising the bar.  I think The Moody Blues is a fine reference as you have it, and I think that their passion, their musicality, and their many vowels are, indeed, iconic.  It fits fine.  I think you can just take the high ground here and tell everyone else that they'll just have to listen to The Moody Blues to understand.

Interesting subject, and a fun read.  Thanks!