“Battle Between the Sexes”; and “Leaving de Sade Behind in Luminous Hues”: a Pair of Sonnets

        Battle Between the Sexes

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

If we were azure, scarlet, orange as

A tangerine, or ugly grayish teal,

If we were purple as the smoky jazz

In Bourbon Street, would other people feel

Attracted by our lavender pit hair

Or aqua pubic fuzz?  If irises

  

Were glowing phosphorescent mauve, a pair

Of circlets looking like louche viruses

Infected them, would anyone make winks

To flirt?  If skin were incandescent green,

And swelling parts were glowing, slickened pinks,

Would folk conclude that we are just obscene?

  Divinity has made us boring shades

    And so we cause explosions like grenades.

Leaving de Sade Behind in Luminous Hues

Exotic colors, though, of skin and hair

Might turn some humans on.  Some perverts love

Such oddities.  Well, that’s my guess.  A pair

Of balls in wrinkled pouch that hangs above

(In shouting blond) the gap between the thighs

Could well cause sweatiness of lust in some.

You never know.  Such just might win a prize.

Yet . . . would sarsaparilla-colored cum

Turn on weirdos?  Probably.  You’ve been warned.

And what if genitals were colored like

An ultraviolet glow?  Would they be scorned?

Who’d want a glowing black light twitching spike?

  Undoubtedly there’s someone somewhere who

    Would love a splat of cum in fevered blue.

Phillip Whidden