A SHORT  HISTORY OF PORNOGRAPHY

The Greeks went in for some really hardcore

Tableware. They had plates and beakers
Painted with well buff, grinning, big boys

Doing it every whichaway

To common whores with frizzy hairdos.

Not a whole lot of respect for women

There one feels.

                             
                        But some of it’s sweet

This lovely couple- with her on top-

Look equal, and they’re having fun,

Gazing into each other’s eyes.

I’d have no qualms about eating my bread

And grapes off them.

                                      The Romans painted

Scenes of congress on dining room walls

Where women, kids and servants could see ‘em.

I call that civilised.

                             When Pompeii

Was dug from its tufa the dilettanti

Kept all the good stuff out of sight.

And traded phalloi and dinky statues

And prints of the same in small editions

Like Pokemon cards.

                             And only men

With properly elevated minds

(Which meant, in practice, a private income)

Were in on the game.

                             I proffer “cum”

To my search engine and after a handful

Of jolly sites in devotional Latin,

We’re into the good old bizarre bazaar-

A billion pictures of what you like,

But none, I think, painted on crockery.

If I had kids I could put a lock

On the engine, keep their scrabbling minds

From the fundamentals.

                             When I was a kid

I’d scrape up my peas and potato to get

At the bunnykins pattern underneath.

Just think how big an incentive your Greek

Or Roman kid had to clear its plate.