Masochism

Young dental hygiene assistant Laura
likes the challenge
whitish hair tucked under blue paper cap
gray mask
me lying head-in-the-lobe-rests
I should have said head-in-a-vise
Randy Quaid
Mule Mulhall
come on Buddusky
requested no anesthetic
Laura starting right in
shouldering into her work
water pic my gumline

nam myoho renge kyo
nifty flashy blue-handled scrapers
I can see out the corner
my watery eye
feet clamped
sandaled toes
swaying in the precise arcs of Laura’s
pebbly scraping as she
stares down at me
through tubular magnifying lenses
really just seems to scratch an itch
skeletons dancing behind my eyes
my Barbaric Yawp reading why’d

I play so hard to get?
and what else did I do
but post a supercilious poem
on the Gettable Peach page?
I was asking for it
and got it too
praying
then it won’t hurt no more
suction tube whistling in my left cheek
some dumb cluck kid
too beaten down and terrorized
to know what he wants
beautiful junior high girl

who played Hero in the park

lovely low area in the grass
actors running barefoot into Shakespeare’s
virtual Messina
today twenty years belatedly
complimenting her on her interpretation
silly self-conscious pre-adolescent child
angel or whore which is crueler?
working in the gift store now
bloody marks on feet and wrists
suddenly running for his life
but it’s amazing how good pain feels
when you aren’t afraid anymore.