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1994-1997 anniversary
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BONDAGE
carl herr
I.
The empty promises they gave me
flickered like neon signs
in Times Square
where I waited for them in the art gallery
One woman played the guitar
the other sang
but their sweet music
was nowhere to be heard here
Late night: the gallery closed
and they still weren’t there
“Was it me?”, I wondered
or did they go off
on some kind of acid trip
The one I wanted to relate to
sat there at the last coffee house
with such a sense of apartness
Head down in her hands
Crying
Smothered by the poisoned fumes of cigarette smoke
I wanted to approach her
perhaps to comfort her
but she was far too melancholy and morose
and I felt like the mate of a black widow spider
approaching her on the web
afraid of imminent death
I retreated
As I fell out into the open air
flickering embers of the Great White Way
lay scattered
Stores shuttered down on 42nd Street
waiting for some kind of rebirth
only a few porno shops remained
I passed by the strip show I had visited
years ago
on the day
I first went on medication
I remembered
scrambling up the staircase
past walls splattered with paint
I was immediately
mother like taken in
by a stripper
who took all my money
and then pointed the sign stating,
“No Refunds”
as the song chanted, “I’ve got the power”
enclosed in an isolation booth
watching her spread
the pink essence of her cunt
I realized
that walls have two sides
The strip show burned down a year later
and the remains
are covered with sheet metal barriers
I passed by
Entered an X-rated video store
and picked up a video simply entitled, “Pain”
It was made in Germany of course
and the translation of the captions
described a man getting tattooed
and promised the viewer plenty of blood
I’m no stranger to pain
for I’ve been seduced the Stellazine
fucked over by Haldol
only to be raped by Lithium
Pain
Its my fix
Pain
Its a way of like
for the three women I know
who are incest survivors
each one living a different lie
Suddenly I’m awakened walking down Forty-Deuce
by a conman
who promises me his women
Instant companionship
Fuck me; Fuck me; fuck me
then pay the price
The only one who chose to meet me at the art gallery
was a friend of mine
She’s a dominatrix
and she came in her tight pants and cheap blonde hair
She’s quitting the business, she says
Going to see a shrink
but I long for what she is leaving behind
Yeah man
I wanna be tied down
tied down like a mental patient
tied down like Sylvia Plath receiving insulin shock
tied down like a political prisoner of war
II.
Now I’m wandering around Main Street
as the night creeps in
I see the comforting Thorazine blue glow
of television
suffocating the dwindling lives of the elderly
trapped in their apartments
The homeless man with the matted dreadlocks
heads for the supermarket with his collection of cans
and the elderly Hasidic Jew
who prowls ominously in front of the 7-11 all day
goes home to his world of redemption and ritual
The bus spills over with humanity
fat black women with seething thighs
Korean women with faces
shriveled like rotten apples
betraying the toll of time
and old Jewish women
who paint their faces like whores
wearing dead animals on their backs
dragging their husbands who hack and spit
their last breaths
School buses
have gone home
letting off hordes of Catholic school girls
who hike up their skirts
revealing pale white flesh
Somewhere my friend who is retarded
comes home form the day treatment center
provoking disgust among fellow travelers
who avoid the hands clutching at
handrails with that tell-tale shake
Melaril does that to a person
I come home in time for my obese flatulent roommate
to come shuffling into the house
wolfing down McDonald’s and Cheers
and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue
The couple next door
scream hat words
and their poodle yips in anxiety
I open the window
and the faces of children
appear at the window across the courtyard
trying to peer into my window
My room stifles
like an isolation room in a psychiatric ward
I have few respites
from this life
for I grew up schizophrenic in a schizophrenic town
The elementary school I attended
was abandoned and is disintegrating
along with all hope I ever placed in the town
I only found peace in the library
watching the sun set over the bay
and listening to electric church bells
cry over the lost virginity of Catholic school girls
I watched the train pull away from the town
to a place without oppression
Once my mother took me on the train
to visit my piano teacher
Dave Brubeck was playing “Maria” from West Side Story
Big wet snowflakes fell
I sat on his waterbed
and stared at his antiques and foreign trinkets
He gave me a pre-Columbian bird of jade
worth hundreds of dollars
I later found out he had given me part of his life
for six months later he died of AIDS
I vowed to find a niche in this world
and one day I took the train there
and saw if for myself
I know my parents were proud when I entered Vassar
but I left the home of the liberal fascists
and wandered around
the battered remains of the Lower East Side
At a hard-core matinee
in Loisaida
I came to see
God is My Co-Pilot
I stood watching
transfixed
in the basement
covered with graffitied cryptic symbols
Others in front moshed
moving like free radicals
No one stared at me
though I’m far from punk
and for an instant
I was part of their community
and I’ve been hospitalized a couple of times
since my days of wandering
but it didn’t do shit
and I’m back in college
didn’t do shit either
Someday they’ll be a high school reunion
What the fuck will I tell them then
when they ask me where I am today
Will I be the poster child for Psychiatric medication
the avant-garde artist
the freak
or just somebody people want to avoid
My true being is neither here nor there and
someday I’ll learn
the people I thought were following me
were following their own illusions
and the people I felt hated me
were experiencing isolation and confusion
for only when you’ve been dead inside all your life
and you’ve escaped this burden
can you experience true freedom
and life as it should be
