Douglas MacKevett




Intercourse discourse, said Professor X,
must contain the three Rs:
Repetition, rhythm and rhyme.
In moments of vulnerability and shame,
that is, intimacy and trust, we revert
to the phatic function of language,
like a child struggling with first words.
Ooh, baby, you’re so good, come on
Not exactly Shakespeare, sexually illiterate,
lexically impoverished, syntactically crippled.

Discursive technique and coital competence
are the quintessence of eroticism,
for sex is nought but the tactile extension
of the tongue, the kinesthetic extrapolation
of metaphor and the word, the continuation
of conversation begun among spirits and
sweetly tethered out in carnal struggle.

Forget the pulp fiction of pornographers,
their obsession with banality and anality,
their world wrapped in the shrill blankets of sex,
pinks and techno drumbeats.
Maniacs of measurement: how long,
How many, how big, how much.
Babes in Toyland, buffed out and beefed up,
idolators of silicon self-love,
monosyllabic blubberers of sensual Babel.

A couple silent in bed are lost in mental chatter,
a loud self-deafening litany of chores, taxes and incriminations
echoed in the hushed grunts of two bodies
seeking a common tongue, finding Esperanto
or, on better days, a muddied Patois.

The epitome of erotic expression lies
in the making of intimate banter:
The play, foreplay and interplay of lexical threads
like a trace of saliva left on a lover’s lobe,
the possibility of words coupling and co-mingling
(not swinging, as some lovers do),
but in fickle and titillating ways.

Do not, warned Professor X, confuse
the linguistic sub-domain of carnal chatter,
that endless string of obscenities
profanities, and visions of orgies
with the fluid utterance and rapidity
of an orgasm of lexis, a flood of
vocabulary pushing the dam
of the repressed and addressed
to the oppressed and undressed.





Douglas MacKevett is a writer, poet, and mythologist based near Lucerne, Switzerland. His work focuses on short-form fiction, spoken word and myth. When not crafting stories, Douglas enjoys the Swiss Alps with cross-country skiing in winter and hiking in summer.