Having only been writing poetry regularly since May of this year, I was troubled by the usual doubts, was my free verse really just prose, or prose poetry – and it took a while to find and see poetry as a voice, and a language. So then I wondered if you could talk about literally, anything, in this voice and language. So this poem explores a frivolous subject with the voice of poesy…
I read it out on OLN Live and promised to post it for OLN over at dVerse Poets Pub hosted by Grace in OpenLinkNight
Is it beneath a poet to talk about knickers
the garments beneath – until they are not.
In the Nineteenth Century
obsessed with classification
they codified the Language of Fans
(the ones you fluttered and flirted with)
so that you might send the right signals
to your desired paramour
and not the wrong ones
to the rest of the world
the Language of Fans
the Language of Flowers
the Language of Colour
do knickers also speak
in a language of their own?
Undergarments, bloomers
pants, panties, scanties
skivvies, thongs, briefs or knickers.
I only know the words in
the English language
who knows what other words
are said or never said
in other languages
seen or never seen
Women may spend so long
choosing their outer clothes
do they give such thought
to what lies beneath
on the off-chance
that today might be the day…
and what woman’s mother
did not warn her
always to wear clean knickers
in case of being involved
in an accident
as if doctors and nurses
of the Emergency Room
have not got
more professional concerns
than the emergence of dirty knickers!
Are black knickers sexy
because of the maximal contrast
on a white woman
and do white-on-black
have the same connotation
do white knickers evoke
purity and innocence
for in some cultures
white is for death and the afterlife
but a shared view is that
white represents the divine and holy
in life and in death
can knickers ever represent the divine
or is it that which they enclose
that lovers dream of divinely
If black is sexy
ramp it up with laciness
for nothing says sexy
more than half revealing
that which is not supposed
to be seen – which can be said
for knickers themselves
Before the mini-skirt
made the possibility of
glimpsing knickers
unguarded (or intentionally)
Underwear was often
flesh-coloured or
pale peach -think
silky French knickers
loose and airy
and never seen
beneath the flappers
below-the-knee
fringed concoctions
the mini-skirt called for
briefer underwear and
ironically when so much
was being revealed
it was felt that pale peach
would not do
in case a flash was mistaken for flesh
and so bright colours
patterned prints
and even slogans
proliferated
– with slogans surely
the message outweighs
the medium
If knickers black on white
or white on black say
I am here – look at me
then what of red
small and satiny
ruched or ramped up
further with lacy transparency,
– what do red knickers
spell out – if there is indeed
a secret language of knickers
the colour of blood,
red is associated with
danger, sacrifice and bravery
so it is it a brave choice
to wear knickers of a colour
that also signals
heat, passion, sexuality
anger, love and joy?
A friend once told me
how a colleague
had eventually confessed
that intending to visit
her at her remote
cottage in the country
he was arrested by the vision
glimpsed through the
un-curtained window
of her lying across her lover’s lap
Victorian bloomers around her knees
receiving a fond chastisement
the colleague crept away
eventually
for is not the unwrapping
of the beautifully packaged
the erotic deliverance
of what is promised
in the language of knickers
some knickers anyway
something seemingly forgotten
by most makers of porn
with the slow reveal simply
being lost between cuts
a mistake the Burlesque stripper
would never make
And after white, black and red
what do other colours say
about the wearer
if they say anything at all
– purple, cerulean blue
emerald green
these are colours
at least in my experience
seldom seen
and what of the form
what does that say
if message it is even
intended to convey
and not a very private preference
quite without intent of sin
of what to wear
closest to the skin
In middle age
lascivious gives way to
comfort and by old age
it is big knickers all day long
unlike the thong
which covers the naughty bits
but bares the bum
and instead of flattening
the curves as other garments do
– leaves the tight skirt with no VPL
outward shape fit equally
close to underlying form
The freedom of French knickers
the high cut, the arbitrary
line of boy-shorts
what an education most boys
could confess too
who grew up with the
catalogue pages
lingerie it seemed
to the uninitiated
in every imaginable
form and colour from
black to white and red to blue
today’s young explorers
with unfettered access to the internet
might be forgiven for thinking
that more women than not
spend their lives going commando
and why is it called lingerie
who lingers over lingerie?
Make no mistake
knickers are the stuff of dreams
or more prosaically – fantasies
and even without a Victorian
guide to the messages
without teaching
perhaps even
instinctively
we mostly seem
to know the meaning of
the language of knickers…
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
