Poem: "Tantalizing"

This poem came out of the May 7, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired and sponsored by technoshaman.  It also fills the #1 First Blush slot in the Rainbowfic Sunlight list.  This poem belongs to the Schrodinger's Heroes  project.

It was the closest thing to erotica
that Tim the Tentacle Monster had found on Earth.

There was just something about  the way
that the words twisted and turned and twined together,
gripping and groping across time and dialect,
so sleek and slippery in their dripping insinuations.

Alex caught him at it, of course,
and Tim nearly pinched a tentacle in the laptop
as he pulled away with a startled jerk.

"You're studying puns?  And homonyms?"
she said with a laugh.  "What's this all about?"

Tim's chromatophores twitched in embarrassment,
turning his skin into a pastel image of the environment.
"Are you blushing?  You are!"  Alex exclaimed.
"Oh wow, I've never seen that before,
but it makes total sense, a muted camouflage reflex
in response to a minor social scare."

Because Alex was a genius,
primarily a quantum mechanic,
but you just never knew
what she would notice next
or turn out to be unexpectedly good at,
and Kay had gotten interested in xenobiology
so there was always talk of it floating around
the Teflon Tesseract, and honestly
Alex was interested in anything that smacked of science.

"Hey, Ash!" she shouted over her shoulder.
"Come take a look at this!  Tim's on the internet
surfing wordplay and it's making him blush."

Ash, who like Tim was asexual
and customarily found her gratification
somewhere other than her lap,
leaned over his squiggling shoulder.
She quirked one ebony eyebrow at him and asked,
"What do you find so fascinating about this?"

"Tentilla," Tim said, "tantalizing,"
what passed for his tongue tripping delicately
over the tips of the consonants, enjoying the alliteration.
The smallest and most sensitive of his tentacles
quivered with delight, and his skin
flushed a shade closer to the environmental hues.

Ash did not complain at getting
an example instead of an explanation,
because Tim's explanations of his species' erotic activities
made about as much sense as "squid deglazing doorknobs."

She just smiled, slow and inviting,
then sat down beside Tim and said,
"Let me introduce you to the wonderful world
of multilingual puns."

* * *

Notes:

Chromatophores are cells which control the coloration of skin.

Tentilla are tiny tentacles, often with a specialized purpose.

Multilingual puns exist in many places, including Shakespeare's writing.