Knuckle Dragger (dystopian free verse)

ape cone with bristle
haunch stomach and knuckles folded in front of the groin
the rolling gorilla orbits
score sub-human terror kisses at tourists
he's in a power squat
and he's out a good three narrow inches
one radient pungent skin piccolo
it's eyes are bigger than its manhood
he's a monumental beast
with the what you looking at hiss

Viewed

I've been asked to talk about something that changed my life, and since I don't travel or socialize, I have to admit that it was something I saw on television around 1978. At the time, sex therapy was a new kind of business, and according to the doctors, if people didn't improve their sex lives they were practically public enemy #1, collectively, as there must be billions of people who aren't so attractive or talented in making love. Much as you are robbing society of its due if you have an untreated phobia, at that time you were proably making your spouse, and in turn your family, employer and coummunity miserable because you are so irritable and constipated when you don't have great sex.

(continued below)

It was a PBS show, one that came and went like the gourd on Jonah's square yard of beach front. They were experimenting with the media. And with us, as well. First the doctor spoke, on a couch, with a relatively unknown television journalist, which was informative. Men, she explained, who suffer from premature ejaculation are one of the reasons Americans are so uptight and unsuccessful. There is no way of reaching your full potential if you can't keep a chubby for at least forty five minutes, which is the least amount of time possible in which to bring your spouse to an orgasm. She went on to expain that there was a rogues gallery of quick squirts at large, each with his own type of malady.

The next part of the show was my fave. Dr. Melissa Milgram, this time, was in a sound studio interviewing three couples, all of whom were under her care. Each of the couples was married, and may even have had children and houses and jobs and cars, and none of them, prior to being referred to the good doctor, was ready to admit that their sex life wasn't as good as it could be. There was something wrong with all of them, and in the course of conventional therapy it was determined that whatever the beef was on the surface, below the green water there was some form of sexual dysfunction that was robbing the world of their productivity and social redemption. Women bereft of satisfaction are famous for being cranky. And men turn either queer or homocidal, so it's mighty important to iron out what ever is wrong. All the couples were eventually referred to Doc Milgram.

It wasn't the information that made my life, that day, so special. It was the eagerness with which they all talked about popping prior entry, of trying to correct the problem on their own by thinking about baseball while going at it, and about the roaring success that the doctor's therapy brought them. One of the men boasted that he had gone from seconds to minutes, and was very proud of his accomplishment. The wives got their say, and they all agreed that it was sometimes a good idea for their men to give them head, which helps guarantee them their best orgasm. But all six of them seemed pleased for the chance to be on television, all talking about something once taboo and now the avante guarde. People should talk about their sex lives, as well as all other elements in their lives, openly, anywhere, to anyone. Repression sucks.

The doctor made a good authority figure, and it was learned from the Zimbardo experiments that ordinary people are capable of anything provided they have the approval of a convincing enough authorty figure. Somehow that television show seemed, to me, like the beginning of a new breed. They weren't mock electrocuting fake victims in an adjacent room, with the white man in the white coat giving them the go ahead, but they were telling the world that they were guilty of innadaquacy and that they had done what was necessary to correct it. It was the a new beginning for willing participants. We can't progress as a society, afterall, if we shun modern science.

Now I feel safer knowing that in the future, further experiements and procedures will be carried to fullment and ultimatley replaced with other equally urgent medicine. After all, there is something wrong with everyone, and you can self-actualize by being on television. It was the beginning of schlock therapy.