Safe Sex Poems.
The Baguio Writers Group is mulling on giving away prizes for the safest and the sexiest poems during the poetry reading at Rumours Bar along Session Road, Baguio City on Dec. 1, Aids Day, at 9:30 pm.
The audience may vote for which is the safest and which is the sexiest.
Posporo Flower (ha-ha-ha!)
1. Safe Sex by Donald Hall*
<http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/264>
If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident
they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;
if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire
only the tribute of another's cry; if they employ each other
as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—
then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,
no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,
no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated
apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond's edge
*From “White Apples and the Taste of Stone” Copyright (c) 2006 by Donald
Hall. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
2. Safe Sex Sonnet by Mary Mila**
When reason calls to be set free
the mind need always fashion cause
and cloister want behind staid dress
though somehow, someday, we all face death.
When passion calls to be given reign
there's reason enough to stall
to check the flesh and rising blood
and clothe desire beneath a hood.
One avenue is straight and paved
another barely cleared.
Both seed and harvest need their season
and flesh and blood their time to leaven
**This just came out from Three Quarks Daily:
3. Social Security by Terrence Winch
No one is safe. The streets are unsafe.
Even in the safety zones, it's not safe.
Even safe sex is not safe.
Even things you lock up in a safe
are not safe. Never deposit anything
in a safe-deposit box, because it
won't be safe there. Nobody is safe
at home during baseball games anymore.
At night I go around in the dark
locking everything, returning
a few minutes later
to make sure I locked
everything. It's not safe here.
It's not safe and they know it.
People get hurt using safety pins.
It was not always this way.
Long ago, everyone felt safe. Aristotle
never felt danger. Herodotus felt danger
only when Xerxes was around. Young women
were afraid of wingèd dragons, but felt
relaxed otherwise. Timotheus, however,
was terrified of storms until he played
one on the flute. After that, everyone
was more afraid of him than of the violent
west wind, which was fine with Timotheus.
Euclid, full of music himself, believed only
that there was safety in numbers.
*********************************************
Press Release
*"Ribbed, Dotted or Strawberry: Poetry Reading on Safe Sex"*
The Baguio Writers Group and Ubbog (a group of young Cordillera writers)
will hold a poetry reading on safe sex Dec. 1 at 9:30 p.m. at Rumours Bar on
Session Road, Baguio City.
The event marks International AIDS Day. Entitled "Ribbed, Dotted or Strawberry," the reading features 10 poets who will celebrate sex and romance without life-changing results like pregnancy and STD.
Open-mike reading follows. Volunteer readers are welcome and encouraged not to be intimidated by the subject. Safe sex has a wide scope.
As one of the members said, it could just be gazing at the moon and thinking of the beloved. Or it can be as raunchy as torrid kissing, heavy petting, mutual masturbation. You may read your own stuff, read another's or heckle those whose idea this is.
The poems that will be read for the night include Ma. Luisa Igloria’s latest poem sent from Ragdale(USA) where she's on an artist's residency; she composed "Osculation Station" for the event, while Babeth Lolarga will read an excerpt from her long poem "From the Calendar of Anger."
Please text or email Babeth Lolarga if you'll be in the shortlist of 10 readers. Her number is 0916-242-1637.
The sponsors are Rumours, Philippine NGO Council on Health, Population and Welfare and DKT Philippines.
