When I was young and lustfully inclined

I set my sails to cross the wine dark seas

In search of lands where lotus eaters lived,

Seduced by tales of hedonistic joys;

A world of myriad fleshly delights

And unrestrained sensual indulgence,

Where I could gorge on luscious nubile fruits

In endless days of sweet debauchery.

With never a moment’s pause for regret

Or backward glance to my days of childhood,

Those happy days of guileless innocence,

I pressed on towards my decadent goal,

Driven by unbridled wantonness,

And dazzled by salacious promises

Of monstrously exquisite ecstasies

In rites of Dionysian excess.

Inflamed by onanistic fantasies

Of the legions of succulent maidens 

Who would willingly yield their innocence

To conquer and possess for my pleasure,

Plundering the sweet pulsating treasure

Of whoever would succumb to my charms,

Taking equal delight in despoiling

The nubile flesh of innocent virgins

Or compliant voluptuous matrons.

I have plunged headlong into drug enhanced

Orgiastic revels in sacred groves

On many jewelled Aegean islands,

Floating on waves of naked dancing girls;

And danced with wild abandon to the throb

Of jungle drums in Haitian taverns,

Drowning in the heady fervid darkness

On the profane altar of writhing limbs.

With the passing years my jaded senses

Grew bored with simple pleasures of the flesh,

Needing ever more arcane amusements

To excite my libidinous palate

And rouse me to the pinnacle of lust,

Tumescence and release only achieved

By resorting to the stimulation

Of a tincture of coca leaf in rum.

Somehow I washed up in London’s East End

Living alone in a seedy doss house,

Just one more wreck among the detritus

Without hope, a shadow of that bold youth

Who had set out in search of higher truth

In a life of lascivious excess.

I was near to death when she redeemed me,

An angel of mercy sent by heaven.

She was one of that new breed of women,

Well educated and with a mission

To seek out those who were lost and broken,

And restore them to full humanity.

I cannot comprehend why she chose me,

Or what she could see amidst the wreckage,

But slowly she nursed me back to full health,

Without trace of sentiment or judgement.

Over the months that followed my rescue

She revealed to me a more profound truth,

That life is more than sensuality,

And real fulfilment an elusive goal

When carnal pleasure is divorced from love.

Mutual love developed between us

Until we reached a point of convergence

When marriage became the logical choice.

We refrained from sexual union

Before the knot was immutably sealed,

But conjugal vows made, to my delight,

In the privacy of our marriage bed

She revealed a nature as passionate

And gloriously unrestrained as mine,

And in our thirty five years together

We mounted unimagined peaks of joy.

Somehow it seemed, as I awoke that dawn,

The first morning following our nuptials

That in less than the blinking of an eye,

From the small death of sleep I had entered

Into a rich vision of paradise,

More full of lushly sensual delights

Than anything that I had ever known

In the passing years of my former life.

Even before the shrouds of slumber cleared

Blissful memories of a night of love

Diffused their warm radiance through my mind,

Another night of mutual rapture

As my lover led me on a journey

To the high summits of deepest pleasure

The harmonious fusion of our flesh

The beginning of years of perfect joy.

Since that day she has been the only one

With whom I have shared the many delights

Of sexual pleasure, but more than that,

My goddess has been for me all women,

A courtesan one day, skilled in the arts

Of lighting a bonfire of ecstasy

In my burning loins, a bright flame so fierce

It consumed my flesh in torrents of bliss.

At other times she was like a mother

Tenderly caring for my wounded soul.

Sometimes she would subordinate her will

To my urgent desires, a sacrifice

On the altar of lust, while at others

She would become the leader and master

Of my soul, my body the instrument

To carry her aloft on waves of joy.

My happiness was cruelly punctured

On a baleful autumn day late last year

When fate stole her life to leave me bereft,

Another victim of the Spanish flu.

But when I woke on this my natal day,

The seventieth since the light first dawned

On the mewling babe who became the man,

I was blessed by a miracle of love.

I was roused from the arms of Morpheus

By a thousand exquisite sensations

Running like bright tendrils of liquid flame

Through the flesh of my recumbent torso.

The source of this wondrous awakening

Soon revealed itself as the delicate

Meanderings of sensitive fingers

Electric with promise of ecstasy.

Then a husky voice whispered in my ear

Thick with desire and the promise of bliss,

The seductive voice of the courtesan

Filling my mind with visions of rapture, 

Whose goal was pleasure incomparable,

Where transported beyond mortal feeling

We would unite in ethereal joy

Her special present from beyond the grave.

With innumerable tiny kisses

She ushered me further on my journey

Towards a realm of exquisite delight,

Each step carrying me ever closer

To the threshold of transcendent rapture

Where at last released from all mortal bonds

I would enter the sublime paradise

Of lovingly consummated desire.

Time had ceased to have meaning or substance

As I hovered on the crest of release,

Tenderly held in the loving embrace

Of my ethereal companion

Within which I waited to be reborn

Into a blissful region beyond thought,

Redeemed from the pain of expectation 

In an eruption of ultimate joy.

My succubus thrust me over the brink

And a fountain of glistening silver

Surged heavenwards from my pulsating core

In torrents of inexpressible bliss

To shatter in crystal shards of rapture

On the clouds of eternal ecstasy,

As I entered the realm of redemption

And endless peace in the sweetness of death.