Even Donald Hall Knows Safe Sex

When I came out with the idea of a Safe Sex Poetry Night, I got emails asking me "Why?" and "What's safe sex?" Why not? Sex is a sexy topic and putting on a condom is not? The Catholic Church is winning the battle of words in this aspect. They call withdrawal, calendar and putting a thermometer in the sex organ of the woman to determine if she's not fertile natural family planning. What's natural with these? Then PGMA should mandate that Victoria's Secret and Anito should put a thermometer, pocket calendar and beads (for the bead method) alongside the Gideon's Bible. Hey, the natural family planning method got 90 percent of the FP budget!
Anyway, here's a poem from the former U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall (from White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Copyright 2006 by D.H.)

Safe Sex

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