This Body is a Palace of Pleasure
Is it
time? you ask, as you clasp
my hand, a twinkle in those big
brown eyes. It’s been three weeks.
This sick, achy body is ready.
You put in the chair, wrangle
the perfect temperature, ease me in.
The steam. The hot spray.
Your hands. Those beautiful
sensuous hands, the delicate
bones I
long to lick & suck.
You quickly wash yourself,
all suds and skin and hair,
singing “Music is Love”. I rest
in my chair, face turned up. I’m aroused
watching you wash yourself,
the seductive way you sponge
and stroke. When it’s my turn, you face
me fully. Start with my long hair,
meticulously massage mango shampoo
into every strand, scrub my scalp.
Next, you slather rose soap
onto a soft blue washcloth. Tenderly,
you raise my right arm, inhale,
and scour my hairy armpit,
work your way down my arm
to my fingertips. You pause,
briefly, to rub my hands
and kiss my swollen
knuckles. Rinse and repeat
on the left. You whisper
close your
eyes, before softly
soaping my face, my neck,
and nuzzle in after rinsing. How silky
your skin you repeat
like a mantra.
You spend a long time bathing
my voluptuous breasts, talking
to them playfully. They adore you
and have their own relationship with you.
When you’re not around, they tell me
all about it. The way they introduced
themselves to you, back
when we first met in 1994.
It’s titillating when you scrub
my back, the only place I cannot
touch myself. When you turn
to my belly, I
moan as you thrust
your index finger into my innie.
You lift one foot, then the other, lave
and knead. Between the toes
feels ummmmm. Slowly, you move
your wet warm hand up my legs,
careful with the backside
of my knees. Slowing down even more,
as you reach my velvety inner thighs.
You are worshipping at the church
of Yoni now, head bowed, praise
on your lips. I let myself fully relax
into this intimate rapture
of being bathed by my beloved.
An offering so sensual, melodic
and necessary, my cells are abuzz
with the starlight that made us.
You have alchemized
this tired, painful body
into a pulsing palace of pleasure.
a Palace. a Pulsing. a Pleasure.
a Pleasure. a Pleasure. a Pleasure.
Our Story
For my beloved
Sometimes I imagine us
as Charlie’s grandparents —
the ones that didn’t make it
to the chocolate factory —
laying side-by-side in bed,
our bodies pinned down
like butterflies on a dusty display
board for the last
nineteen years. Together,
we hold the center. On days
when our bodies unravel,
we become paper wasps,
who slowly digest
each hued piece then spit
out honeycomb rainbows
to line our nest. When life
took my eyes, I grew back
new ones like a blue-bellied
lizard after a ferret snatched
its tail in its toothy mouth.
And when your pelvis broke
in half, you built a bridge
with the metal scraps
you salvaged
on the ground around you.
When pharmacies
and doctors dam our path,
we use our fingers
and toes, clawing and churning
until we find a new route.
We become trees
growing through fences and rock,
insurance companies
and bureaucracies — whatever,
gets in our way. We remind me
of our dog Sari — arthritic back
legs, dry tongue hanging out —
each time she tries to jump
up on her favorite green chair,
she circles and circles,
and when she regularly misses,
she circles again and again — until
she finally makes it. Is this just
a story we tell ourselves
to keep going on the long,
difficult days when our bodies
play possum? Or perhaps
this is precisely the story
we need to continue circling
and circling, until
we are able to leap —
LISA GEISZLER is a disabled poet who lives with the severe chronic illness ME/CFS, and a print disability. She spends 90-95% of her time in bed, where she writes slowly, often a line a day. Poetry – reading it, writing it, listening to it – is one of her best medicines. She is a member of Pillow Writers. You can find her on Twitter @MElovewarrior.