Kipling called prostitution
The world's oldest profession.
Now, I'm pretty sure that it
Will be the last, as well:
The last professional endeavor --
The last profitable activity --
That humans do better than
Machines.
Whores will be the last holdouts
To shift from being workers
To being Artists of Humanity. . .
Or - maybe - they will be
The first in that, as well.
Letters from a Seducer by Hilda Hilst
I'm happy to be a free Yogi,
growing evermore into inner happiness.
I can have sex with many women
as it helps them find the path of liberation.
Outwardly I'm a fool
and inwardly I live a clear spiritual path.
Outwardly I enjoy wine and women
and inwardly I work for the benefit of all beings.
Outwardly I live for my pleasure
and inwardly I do everything in the right moment.
Outwardly I'm a ragged beggar
and inwardly a blissful Buddha.
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head
to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no
more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside
but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and
solid earth, and what was expected of
heaven or fear'd of hell, are now
consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play
out of it, the response likewise
ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent
falling hands all diffused, mine too
diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the
ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously
aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and
enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-
blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely
and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding
day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-
flesh'd day.
This the nucleus -- after the child is born of
woman, man is born of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of
small and large, and the outlet again.
Be not ashamed women, your privilege
encloses the rest, and is the exit of the
rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are
the gates of the soul.
The female contains all qualities and
tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect
balance,
She is all things duly veil'd, she is both
passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons,
and sons as well as daughters.
As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with
inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the
breast, the Female I see.
There once was a Shakespearean lover,
Who, in darkness, crawled under cover.
Much to his surprise,
Having no use of eyes,
He later learned 'tweren't his lover, but another.
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st and say that thou
Find'st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
"Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
Mad World: War, Movies, Sex by Slavoj Žižek
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.
the curious child
remains unbaffled by the
complexities
of snail amore:
thinking the lead a tow-snail.
Depends on the context. If I’m thinking about poetry or philosophy (which I often am,) then it pertains to the early nineteenth century movement that counterpoised the Enlightenment. Those “Romantics” disliked what they saw as the cold rationality of Enlightenment thinking; they valued spiritual and mystical experiences, and they believed it was important to not throw out the spiritual “baby” with the bathwater. That is, like many Enlightenment thinkers, they realized that it was necessary to jettison many of religion’s noxious ideas (e.g. the concept of “chosen people”) and also realized that mindlessly following moral dictates that may or may not have made sense in the pre-Christian Levant could be detrimental to their present-day life experience. However, unlike most Enlightenment thinkers, they did find value in spiritual views of the world as well as in the pursuit of mystical experiences. William Blake (even though he is often labeled pre-Romantic) provides an excellent example. His poems are spiritual to the core, and yet explicitly reject a lot of the moralizing and toxic aspects of conventional religion.
Of course, that variety of “Romantic” is usually given a big-R, and so I suspect the question is after a more colloquial definition. With that in mind, I believe “romantic” means “that which facilitates the unity of two (or more, I don’t judge) people in an immersive intimate experience of each other during a common period of time.” I’m not big on trappings. I think people obsess over trappings because it allows them to slack on the physical / cognitive demands of being fully engaged. This is why sex (done well) is such a great tool both for relationship building and for personal development. It makes it relatively easy (i.e. rewarding) to stay fully engaged in a common experience and in the moment, and to not fall into the attentional abyss.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 