January 2023

ECSTASY

by Ian Duncan

In bed, at the bewitching hour of night,

I find you wrapped in linen white.

Warm and naked, waiting

beneath the glow of bedside lamps,

beneath the gentle down-draught

of the languid ceiling fan.

Eyes that twinkle expectation,

catch the light expectantly.

My collar unattaches with a twist of thumb.

My tie knot unknotted, untied, unravelled, undone.

My waistcoat removed a tempo slower than the rest,

for pride, for theatricality, to flirt,

for the accentuation of the contours of my chest

(now flesh, made flesh, by the shedding of my shirt).

Eyes down to my waist. Button. Zip,

and zipper clicks.

Trousers (bulge) and socks (and bulge) and

the first frisson of impatience

for that distracting, all-portentous,

wanton, more-than-wanted bulge.

Patience. Patience.

Just one last vestment to divest.

A manoeuvre made with fingertips.

The tips of fingertips, that barely grip

the waistband gathered ‘round my hips

and lift it forward, upward, around,

to liberate, deliberate,

methodically accentuate

that which now stands insatiate,

as shorts slide to the ground.

I desire. I desire. I burn with incandescent flame;

insatiable, inexhaustible, inextinguishable flame.

You pause for one more teasing moment, then slide

your coverings apart, stretch wide,

and smugly mark the gratitude between my thighs.

My knees indent-in mattress prints;

my hands, like paws, prowl to your side.

My eyes are limitless wanting:

locked on yours, but also roaming.

Somehow rapt and somehow roaming.

Roaming ever over every pore,

every furrow, every valley, every swell,

your lips and ligaments and lips and legs,

each goosebump-rooted soft brown hair.

If eyes could fuck,

you would be wrapped,

already wrapped

around my look.

Our course is surely set, kindled,

set with kindling of carnal fuel:

fuel of hormones, fuel of lust,

fuel to every chamber of the soul.

Every neurone clustered, flustered, fluttering,

anticipating the ignition source.

I breathe the ember-coals ablaze

with half-deep, half-shivered,

half-anticipated breath.

Half keep-the-moment-still-and-sacred breath.

My life- and love-drawn respiration,

feel its faint flush in falling flows

upon your all-anticipating flesh.

Please. Please. Please.

Please. Is please a polite request?

Please. Consent? Please. A yes?

Please. A cry of forlorn distress?

Please now. Please no more wait.

Please now. Please, consummate.

I endure no more than a single plea.

By the dozenth invocation, I'm subsumed

and you're surrounding me. I sink, enlink

and you envelop me, enclose me and embed me.

And in this moment of embodied bliss,

beyond all sense of bodies' brink,

you extend me. You transcend me.

I am yours. I am yours.

I am within the boundaries of your skin.

I am yours, another part of you,

the without made within.

All motion, all stillness,

every breath and beat in sync,

pulsing polyrhythms,

yours around, and mine within.

Instinctive orchestrations

of our somatic interlink,

fade all outside to volumeless,

all volume here within.

It builds. It builds. Plateaus, and builds again.

Beyond where I would swear

the peek had any right to be,

it builds towards its cadence,

its cacophonous euphony.

There. There. Your climax. There.

We spy it in the distance, hunt it down

through undergrowths of uncertainty,

surround it, subdue it, corral it, commence it.

Would-be-nice

becomes perhaps-this-time

becomes a glorious inevitability

becomes right now, right (almost) now.

Now sound. Now music. Crescendo. Now.

What commenced Cage and ascended Adams, now

leaves Elgar's pomp and...

(pump and pump and faster,

faster, faster, fuck-me-faster pump)

…and pomp and circumstance.

Now to summit. Summit. Stratospheric. Summit.

Yes-yes-don't-stop-right-there-I'm-going-to-come.

Summit. Stratophonic. Summit. Sonospheric.

Summit senseless words and symphonies.

Summit Peak Stravinsky's Spring,

contrabassoon and piccolo!

A fermata, quaver pause, at apogee.

Then the great brass gong that hung

foreshadowing behind the timpani

erupts in waves and waves

and crashing fucking waves of ecstasy.

My god, the gate is full of stars.

Elysium's door is come unbarred.

Nirvana's entryway ajar.

And ìn wè pùlse to ecstasy.

Breathe into my lungs a while-let more;

Pant past my lips still tracing yours.

Respire. Inspire. Conspire with me.

Define with shared epiphany,

our lovelust shared in ecstasy.

Ian Duncan (@IanDWrites) is a poet and author whose work focuses on issues of sexuality, disability, faith and folklore, appearing in venues as eclectic as Star*Line, Breath and Shadow, and Hashtag Queer.

He lives in an old police station in the Welsh countryside, indulging fetishes for audio porn, Pride, progressive politics and poetry books, occasionally all at the same time.

LISTEN TO THE NARRATED VERSION OF THIS POEM @ 

https://soundgasm.net/u/iand/Ecstasy