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"When You Reach a Certain Age"
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Thought Provocation by Jeph Johnson
Masturbation used to be exciting
Because it was anticipating
All the fun sex that
Awaited you.
Now it's depressing
Because it reminds you of
All the fun sex that
You're no longer going to have.
And yet (as Stevens would
And yet (as Stevens would have said), and yet . . . sex is only an elementary part of the adoration of the feminine. Even when the sexual part does not work, one's Beloved can be adored, worshipped, celebrated, and experienced in ways that enter into metaphysics almost. Perhaps you should consider Dante's expression of his feelings for Beatrice; or, Eliot's emotions toward the unnamed woman in his poem, Ash Wednesday. Or, perhaps the extreme expression of it, Wallace Stevens greatest love poem, "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour."
Starward