Bondage-A-Go-Go

Her mother hadn’t planned for this development,
in which the devil
got into her closet with its leather
skirts and latex and accessories,
it means you never have to say you’re sorry
when you have that look. Her lousy-weather
friends can smell a trend, is it a send-up,
writhing in a dead-end

time-warp of subjective atmospheres,
a sound-track with “no tears
for the creatures of the night.” The shady
characters are out in force, they missed out
on a normal life, and when you’re twisting
in the wind – no way to treat a lady –
why not do it in a windless club.
A skinny girl in rubber

who’s a walking psycho-drama poses,
there are pregnant pauses
when her legs are tied with silken ropes,
a ritual, and lifted on a meat-hook
with a pulley, managing to look
quite lovely though, and things are not so hopeless
if you look good in a corset, upside-
down, nowhere to hide,

her legs askew, they’re long and pale, a thong
and heels and she belongs
to the music, with an amplified
existence and her morals are in slo-mo,
blurring the distinctions with a homo
who is spinning records. Men have died
in order that the show go on, we’re paying
our respects and staying

until it’s closing time, a sonic frontier
evaporating fear.
A woman is on stage relieving tension
in another woman who is bound
and gagged, the masochistic stand their ground,
and the theatrical is a dimension.
An aesthetically regurgitated
Boy George with a date

walks by, the girl is in a black brassiere,
it puts her in the here
and now. In order to externalize
the isometric pressure of existence
where the psyche puts up a resistance
she is handcuffed, helpless, and all eyes
are on her. She’s in need of some restraint
and then she nearly faints.

A side room full of simultaneity
in this society
of wanton discipline, and through the glass
people standing at the bar with idle
gazes are exposed to the idolatry
of punishment and tits and ass.
A fat woman with no clothes on starts to moan,
you know you’re not alone

if someone is caressing you with a whip,
the woman bites her lip,
the man is holding her breast, the black magnetic
tape conceals a nipple, so demure,
she’s bending over, tied to a pole, and purified.
It’s closer to the telekinetic
than pathetic, though the mortification
of the flesh occasionally

is getting out of hand. They’re trained
professionals and sane
as anybody in the medical
profession. It’s a dressing room, a gym,
a living theater for her and him.
There was a time it was heretical,
and the Marquis de Sade was in control,
but then it just got old

so the dungeon morphed into a disco.
Here in San Francisco
people are avoiding the neurotic,
which is painfully aware of details,
by remaining drunk, it never fails
to simplify a person. The erotic
urges come into the open, common
bonds become a come-on.

Two girls are roped together, back-to-back,
though no one’s on the rack,
the anorexic like it here, the body
conscious acting out a role, the torture
is affectionate. I had a futuristic
moment, when massaging somebody
in a chair a woman in a skirt
so short that it was flirting

with her bottom had a glowing cell-phone
on her hip. The bone
and muscle of an all-American girl,
the Andrews Sisters with a sado-
masochistic side, their bodies in a mask
of low-cut leather. It’s a woman’s world
in here, I saw the moving words appear
on her phone, it was endearing

for some reason, as she rubbed the shoulder
of a man. The older
crowd is rubbing egos with the dolls
who are a day or two past twenty-one.
They’re stirred up by the throbbing wave-lengths, the
mundanity of mannequins and walls
has gone away, your contradictions vibrate
in a strobe-light late

at night. I’m listening to “Lust for Life,”
a woman is uplifted
in a corset like two scoops of ice cream
and they tremble as a monster stuck
inside the music stomps around. A truck
is going by outside, a creature screams
in laughter. We absorb the violence
of life and try to make sense.

2.

The women get a free drink if they’re chained
to the bar, and some are trained
to be submissive. They are writhing slowly
in their bonds, a method of abandon,
while a pseudo-sadist keeps his hand in
and the night depends on who you know.
A rapid strobe-light and you move in stop-frame
animation. Fame

is so elusive and you shouldn’t sweat it,
some of us will get it
and some won’t. A thin girl showing courage
and a lot of skin, her hands are tied
above her head, the Bill of Rights denied,
and lesser human beings are discouraged.
She is flying though, a whip all-knowing,
it gets her motor going.

She turns her perfect head and bites her arm,
a woman rarely in harm’s
way, a sudden lash across her butt,
it tests her reflex, standing on one leg.
How often does a woman have to beg
for this attention. If you’re in a rut
you might consider being mummified,
they use seran wrap. No one died

that night, though some of them will push the limit,
while the others imitate
the fatalistic, caught between
a tease in skin-tight plastic and a spastic
on the dance-floor. Life is so elastic
in the fourth dimension, what a scene,
and then to be tied up, a change of pace.
It alters time and space

if you’re the one who is no longer loose,
the second-hand abuse
when the whip is coming down like clockwork.
Metaphors unfasten in the brain,
the built-in innocence of the restrained
who are re-enacting culture shock,
the headlines hit you and they’re leaving scars
until you’re seeing stars.

Ballerina-like a woman hoisted
on a hook, her voice
is mute and she is soaring above our heads,
her arms are spread, a kind of crucifixion.
There is role-playing in the science fiction
of a nightclub and a sense of dread
is lurking in the foreground. The
depravity of gravity

and women who will punish you with their
neutrality, an air
of indifference. Sexually she’s not all there,
a rope between her legs, it makes her hot
or maybe not, in her forget-me-not
attire of tight rubber. People stare
at her. A goth girl who has seen a ghost
is acting as the hostess.

Definition can become a fetish,
looking for the finish-
line and what if it is made of rope.
You’re tied up like a present, you’re a gifted
person whose morality has shifted
with the load. A simulated rape,
the woman in control, her fantasies
are almost a disease.

I met a girl in 1977
who wasn’t made in heaven,
we were in the apartment of a punk band,
Negative Trend, a bondage magazine
was on the coffee table looking obscene
(I had a friend who wanted to make it bland
as wallpaper, take an image and repeat it,
trying to defeat it.)

The other girl with no discernible talent
went off on a tangent,
wearing handcuffs she approached two cops
and let them do it to her in the backseat
of a black and white. Is that a beat-up
thing to do or what. It never stops,
the perversity of men and women,
sinning on a whim.

S & M, they’re going through the motions,
it is so emotional
for some, but here it’s more light-hearted
with the victim smiling. It’s euphoric,
the authority, it’s metaphoric,
know your limits or you will be hurt.
A rope-a-dope ensues and carefully
it redefines the free.