Fucking Artaud

1.
He wants it like I do: a confrontation,
two monsters in a fever dream.
We surge in to the red
with our whole fierce mouths and every fingernail
and come out the other side
laughing, perfected. What we do
is unspeakable
precarious:
those ridiculous cothurni, and the masks
how heavy they are, how hard it is
to breathe
under his rich anger
and all that thick brocade.
God, though,
how tall he makes me stand
and stamp, a wild wrong to beat
and tame and violate til he peels me
backwards and out of my skin
hate pleasure and anger bone, that
violent gift, the brute force of joy,
and his anguished hands gripping
too hard, and finally
hard enough.

2.
I confess
it was the costume I fucked:
those tall boots, seven league
seven inch heels.
It was the mad god mask,
tattooed with candlelight
the tongue protruding,
the totem, the thick Bishop’s staff.
I admit I don't know
what I took,
phallus, fist or fire
but I remember its machinery
and whose howls I heard
through the monstrous mouth
curses and blessings
holy and horrific: one leads
to the other, demon to divine.

3.
I am proud
to be worth beating.
my limbs are good stretched
and strung. I can watch him
looking back, secretly, over my shoulder:
that quick stroke, breathless, one hand
gripping finger bruises onto my hip
and the other
quick hand,
that sharp red
quick in his hand.

I am honored
to play the Bitch to his Bishop
pilloried in lipstick
I can hold up my head
in that snarling, frigid mask
and let the ice and metal
break me down.
He punishes all his women with my moans;
I am a vengeful orgasm. I am a thousand.
My script is to beg him to stop
so he can say no
and put the edge on me
again, take me over,
again. Once for every time
That Bitch wouldn't come.