A Poem Based on a Poem

Here is the John Updike poem that inspired my poem that I will list after the Updike one.

"Fellatio - a poem

How beautiful to think
that each of these clean secretaries
at night, to please her lover, takes
a fountain into her mouth
and lets her insides, drenched with seed,
flower into her landscapes:
meadows sprinkled with baby's breath,
hoarse twiggy woods, birds dipping, a multitude
of skies containing clouds, plowed earth stinking
of its upturned humus, and small farms each
with a silver silo."

John Updike

___________________________________________________
Fellatio

I read John Updike’s “Fellatio”
and need to work

in an office with you—
3rd shift.

I am clean, but
the air is very, very

dirty. This place is filthy.

I’ll be Employee of the Year;
my picture will be framed
above your head.

Every time you get up,
I’ll be there.

I want to be so good,
I’ll put YOUR lips around your Bic--
use YOUR tongue to lick that tasty sticky strip.

You make me crude—
how can I type up these documents properly,
when my head is filled with
want need you, hair, skin?

I need to focus—
on the head of your pen
as I take dictation;
it must be a rollerball.
I swirl the tip of my pen
around your deliciously salty words.

You’ll fill my mailbox
with letters of praise.

“Employee:
You may not be as hard
a worker as me;

You may not always rise
to the occasion, as I do, but
you grab the bull by the horns,
think outside the box, and
you carry your share of the load.

-Dick.”