"Pagan Dances of the Heart," "Beyond Pleasure For Pain For Some Blessed Souls," and "A Pharmacology for Sadists"

Pagan Dances of the Heart

she couldn’t be heard
she couldn’t be seen
as she was lifting her arms backwards
as she gazed at the clock face embedded in each palm

as light streamed through the pinpricks
she saw that she knew
as she ignored spying figures
pierced in sound resurrected by sight
the needles glowed

salty taste of sweat licked off
her skin by trembling tongues
can't stop
pinholes in a sky in clouds
and in a body
eternally glowing

under the collapsing new building
clear mirrors mouthed images
before we crossed the bridge

rivulets trembled under science
a licking haze that clung around us
a relishing pull-back then denial

                   silence told us what to do
clinging then tearing apart
she remembered
whirring rapidly. a pinwheel.
thrown against the sky whose fabric
had ripped. all was new

the
comfort of
black and white

wraps
around her.
she touched the

wall
nearest her.
leaving her

presence
and  the 
white paint screamed

 


Beyond Pleasure For Pain For Some Blessed Souls

State 1: Down The Sides Of Counter-Clockwise

the water and floating cars:
youthful eyes bleeding by the shore
words destroyed in a climaxed blue dawn
solitary photos of her sex strewn on shore
lap lap lapping
another rainy day

and she had murder-appeal
the loose girl everyone
fantasized about

the one with the razor
drives it all home
just like she wanted
souls dripping
after nailing
the golden ratio

phosphorescent edge of dusk wrapped
around her neck
she brought the details
with her

she reeks of the past and
the order of unreason
driving the hips as
wickedness lives above the flesh

sex within the flesh
the guys yelled at her.
the hands to torture information
you’re beautiful he said while being nailed;
a gift touch of the fear corset
his compliments didn’t buy time

the gang walked in on them
dragged him across the floor
the door opened again and a different
female breed strolled in salty with blood from
route 66

 

her face obscenely grinned and gained a cult following
madness began to be conceived as a desire to have cruelty
dances unending unseen unheard

before long the warm tongues of her wet mouths
licked the electric chair
before he sat down
as a hot-shot curdled the veins

from a great and wide night
where the police
died slowly touching
hollow faces
as milk spewed forth from the clouds
blackened by the lust of the
miserable daughter of silence

later they blotted out the handwriting
that described her fear of so many things

it slipped right inside you.

a time
for benedictions
in praise
of modern suicide
a song in praise
of vacant eyes
a laughter containing the
rapid sex of words and things
pearls covered in blood and juice
a dose on the dining room table
an image melded
with the
​Formica

in the bed situated between a
climax and a hollow scream
she lay down to rest, waiting a brief moment for desire
unable to speak to an anonymous collection
naughty dreams and actions collided to music
and she thought
and she thought
as her
saliva
ran

 

State 2: The Burden Of Annette Funicello

lips moved. they refused
a copy of the video.

disjointed touches on her body
that he wouldn’t give.
mad under the supervision
in the beginning said she.
thank you for giving me the image,
a modern day sex symbol.

when first inflamed,
then denied,
later forever lost.
the 3 natures of
human beings:
as virtues denote
a little blood
now slowly hard
against the grain

a description of what is morally speaking.
her cunt lips and clit popped
as she saw necessary.
the sex became clinical
and rote then.

a quark arose behind her
eyelids seen only when her eyes
closed and licked the irises.

she handed them over and kissed
each of her palms
three times.
forbidden lunch.

by the shimmering lake
seated at a table going for
automatic fuck
who to give it to?
a wicked grin as she
licked her fingers,
then they opened to
reveal pleasure
to be the
only
good.

planted her feet firmly
her naked hips aware of the mental
and spiritual
like the orgasm just ending.

It was just
a last song

exit the green world
to the sound of dogs as the

eyes shut again

 


A Pharmacology for Sadists: (Screenplay for Her·Me·Neu·Tics )
/ˌhərməˈn(y)o͞odiks/ noun
the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially of the Bible or literary texts.

OFFSCREEN
“you still see yourself as a scientist don’t you?
in just 40 days you have a date with the hangman.
for a climax you’ll strangle the preacher they’ve sent to hear your confession.”

a doped up heiress read her thesis while accompanied by
                      wailings of rhythmic beasts in heat:
                      “everyone is so politically
correct. (long pause)
epiphanies avoided instead of jerking latent sexual organs to arousal and
                                             ​frigging to enter the wastelands.
                    makes me (beat) fuckin’ sick.
         sex equals art equals starry starry pussy and a
                                   random lunatic’s cock. they’re using me to
                                   pass through to that other place. my faith has been severely
                                   shaken.”

CLOSE SHOT
                    she told of uncontrollable mental illness,
                    branded by the superstitious virtuous virtual vulva incarnate,
                    punished in every form. she said, “such operations will increase
                    your pleasure.
                    split it wide open.”
                    unstable (me) leaving it behind.
                    they were saying now
                    they were just saying (about you).

piercing dancers performed for customers to
replace modern emotions with a stripper show,
while drifting into unconsciousness. stretched or tied up.
genital areas remained obscured,
until the censors were eviscerated by ladies from the cloisters.

                    invariably female, performing mid-coitus,
                    these women lived with contained evidence
                    indicating there were gaping wide slowing lunar shifts.

                    a new pussycat trapped by the revolving
                    staircases well-greased with fluid chasing images.
                    radio news broadcasted the evidence: so foul and wicked.

                    casual sex interrogations for goody-two-shoes
                    (a dancer just for herself)
                    killed by revealing attire on the television talk-show,
                    another broadcast barren, shallow and stupid.

INT. HOTEL LOBBY – NIGHT
highly-explicit imagery classified as exotic.
the sound-scape of the bed tossed and turned,
mauling its occupants.
just a kiss for her before driving away.
she resented her lovers because they kept her brains in a jar,
subject to review and re-use and resentment.

a gently teased slit appeared in plaster.
gradually opening.
her notices were written by pencil points dipped in urine.
“can i blame them?” she asked

                    distinct personality trait
                    she lifted and ducked into another form
                    quickly quietly into another room
                    quiet concern a spectacle she can enjoy
                    woman’s face of running mascara on cells
                    more intensely than pictures especially for you
                    animals turn into people very
                    very gradually
                    pulled back life
                    overcoming internalized barriers
                    and periods of prudish repression
                    ​BenzeDream of Modigliani’s tomb
                    i cried when i saw it: she (forgotten) was buried there too
                    littered with crayon homages and blood
                    it was all about muffling her moans
                    muffled music closeted cravings
                    psychotherapy: theory, research, makeup running
                    soaking wet
                    she stepped into the booth glanced down collapsed
                    battling the ignored prophets for her denied cravings

 

DISSOLVE TO:
she played with power,
relishing the stink of booze, smoke and semen in the carpet.
she pushed its head down into the wall-to-wall and
gave it a snout-full.
she made it help her to tell the story she deserved,
those creatures of online sexuality to hire
“makes you feel like something/someone
don’t it?”

                    coated in the 8mm skin of expanded night,
                    to cover the tightness of the collapsing dawn,
                    morphing into high digital copies.
                    these will last forever always remembering your
                    past pleasures, until the clock implodes and lust mutates,
                    branded by the superstitious virtuous virtual vulva incarnate.

                    emitted from medical gloves
                    dexterous vocal passages and two billows of lust
                    a brief portrait while waiting to imitate in nylon

covering a face her face
kill the katalyst in aktion in morphine

EXTREMELY LONG SHOT:
                    (she whispered, “you still see yourself as a scientist don’t you?
                    i’ll suck up your bitterness,
                    transform your hate and then leave you in darkness.
                    and you’ll strangle the preacher sent to hear your confession,
                    the guy with the white patent leather gore stained shoes.”)

                    a straight taut line of fluid will splice the sky,
                    as eyes roll backwards and the towers wriggle in reversals

                    (laying prone)

                    she’ll anoint silhouettes as tongues clean her stilettos.

                    “any way you want it baby.”

drops fall onto glistening skins
systematic inversions of the movements of a social order
sneak a kiss
she could hear the buzzing
she was continuing to kiss
it was right next to her overlooked

                    “any way you want it baby”

 

 

Peter Marra

Peter Marra has had over 300 poems published either in print or online in over 25 journals. Born in Brooklyn, he moved to the East Village in the late 70’s when Punk Rock and Times Square were exploding. His published works include approximate lovers (Bone Orchard Press), Peep-O-Rama: Sins of the Go-Go Girls (Hammer & Anvil Books), Vanished Faces (Writing Knights Press), Random Crucifixions: Obsessions, Dolls and Maniac Cameras (Hammer & Anvil Books), and a surrealist neo-giallo novel, A Naked Kiss from a Broken Doll, (Hamer & Anvil Books). His newest poetry collection A Dirty Diary of Ordinary Days will be published by INCUNABULA MEDIA in late 2024.

Peter recommends Equal Justice Initiative.

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Thursday, June 9, 2016 - 00:16