Poetry for Life®

Erotic Poetry: Elegant and Evocative

By Elle Kammerer

4 minute read

Beautiful, bold poetry that honors passion, desire, and intimacy.

Poetry is the language of love. It allows for a sense of intimacy between the reader and writer that isn’t found in prose. It’s unapologetic and honest, which makes those that lean into the more sensual side of passion works of power and beauty.

Erotic poetry isn’t brash or vulgar descriptions with a poetic flare. It is a fine balance of elegant language and evocative imagery that celebrates intamacy, love, desire, or, sometimes, the simple enjoyment of the act. While the details may be wrapped in metaphor, erotic poems rarely shy away from the spice.

So, whether you are setting the mood for a romantic evening, reading for pleasure, or simply appreciating poetry that explores passion, desire, and intamacy through verse, these poems capture what makes erotic poetry stand out against other expressions of love and lust. It’s all beautiful poetry that is likely to linger long after you turn the page

Beneath My Hands, by Leonard Cohen

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.

Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.

I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.
Continue…

I want to see you, Rumi

I want to see you.
Know your voice.

Recognize you when you
first come ’round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you’ve just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper: :More”.

A-, by Samuel Menashe

A-
round
my neck
an amu-
let
Be-
tween
my eyes
a star
A
ring
in my
nose
and a
gold
chain
to
Keep me
where
You
are
*

The Hush of the Very Good, by Todd Boss

You can tell by how he lists
to let her
kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it,
is good.
It’s good in the sweetly salty,
deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged
rain is good after a summer-long bout
of inland drought.
And you know it
when you see it, don’t you? How it
drenches what’s dry, how the having
of it quenches.
There is a grassy inlet
where your ocean meets your land, a slip
that needs a certain kind of vessel,
Continue…

Aubade,
by Amber Flora Thomas

I know my leaving in the breakfast table mess.
Bowl spills into bowl: milk and bran, bread crust
crumbled. You push me back into bed.

More “honey” and “baby.”
Breath you tell my ear circles inside me,
curls a damp wind and runs the circuit
of my limbs. I interrogate the air,

smell Murphy’s Oil Soap, dog kibble.
No rose. No patchouli swelter. And your mouth—
sesame, olive. The nudge of your tongue
behind my top teeth.

To entirely finish is water entering water.
Which is the cup I take away?

More turning me. Less your arms reaching
around my back. You ask my ear
where I have been and my body answers,
all over kingdom come.

I want to sleep with you elbow to elbow,
by Joyce Mansour

I want to sleep with you elbow to elbow
Hair entwined
Genitals enlaced
With your mouth as a pillow.
I want to sleep with you back to back
Without breath to keep us apart
Without words to distract us
Without eyes to tell lies
Without clothes.
I want to sleep with you breast to breast
Clenched and sweating
Glistening from a thousand shivers
Consumed by the wild inertia of bliss
Splayed on your shadow
Pounded by your tongue
And to die between the rotted teeth of a rabbit
Contented.