The Chasing Iamb

So shall I have sex or write a poem
The situation’s tense
If I give in to lasciviousness, then my muse and I will be spent
If I throw away my quill to jump under a feather quilt
Then once I’ve come and gone and come, I’ll be wracked with guilt
Aren’t poets supposed to be miserable, lovesick, forlorn
Not happily banging out a meter to the strains of porn
Shouldn’t I simply be masturbating all alone
Then turning my angst and finger cramp into a wretched poem
“Oh, where are you, and who is he, that lingers in the mist
The chariots of Helios still deny your kiss
My soul is turgid, torn tumescent tingling and true
But black satin sheets of wet desire boil a pheromone stew.”
Such oral epics I could produce on the back of restraint
Or of course I could get on my back, and oral till you faint
BUT no instead I’ll alliterate and show off my assonance
Write by flickering candlelight and bid farewell to finance
I’ll eat bread and mouldy cheese and move away to Paris
Catch a fashionable disease and dream about your phallus
Which I’ll compare to a summer’s day as it’s newly shook in June
Resplendent like a daffodil to make a Bath Wife swoon
A satanic mill never stood so tall and yours is a road that
I’d gladly take till your jabberwock finds my bandersnatch
For foreplay on your nipples I will lyrically wax
Till a Nobel Prize for literature becomes my shuddering climax
So shall I have sex or write a poem about having sex
Scheme with rhymes AA, BB or just XY plus XX
Will fame and fortune come my way if I come all alone
Or will my efforts come to nothing, a has been talent free zone
So shall I have sex or write a poem
The situation’s tense
It’s time to throw my leg over, stop straddling the fence
Sex, poem, sex, poem, clamped knees or bed spread
Screw it, screw me, poetic fame comes only when you’re dead.

Penny Ashton