Poetry: Selections from Jack D. Harvey

Pamela Perverse

They told me Pamela Perverse

at the drop of a hat

renders not her sacred garden's

shrouded gate

to man, woman or beast;

it remains closed,

even in the heat of youth,

the spring of maidenhood,

the years of ripening beauty,

even overheated by the creatures

battling around her backyard

her hymen preserved intemerate.

They told me she was turned inward,

always cold and hard as Arctic ice,

always on the lookout for

what would feed her inner craving,

what fed the cloven-hooved,

the riotous half-beasts

celebrating on the Brocken.

But men's sons and daughters

are not wont to be

so steadfast in their inner needs,

walking the narrow path

where pain meets pleasure;

this age not wicked enough

to produce unfaltering devotion

to the cause of self,

to punishment of the other;

nevertheless, there are exceptions.

Pamela, painted and polished

to the nines, dealing out in detail

pain and pleasure;

spiked collars, knouts,

whips, plugs, rubber whatnots 

drawn from her arsenal, her armoire;

truly a wonder in action 

she's her own Alice in Restraintland.

Still, it's hard to be hard, continually

inflict punishment and discipline

manibus plenis, but she must,

no ease or space to put aside

her driving desires,

her many and varied faces

in their unhallowed beauty;

terrifying Medusa, turning

herself to stone

as well as the rest of us.

Titillated, I watch in the wings,

waiting for Pamela to change her tune,

come to roost in some safe place,

turn away from the everyday world,

from her landscape of grotesqueries

and finally arrive at a placid Pamisland;

for torturer and tortured alike

a new start, a destination

stranger and more real than Paradise.

But she never will.

Never turn from her course.

Such power she has,

such power she loves,

to make bright and sublime

gravitate to the dark, confine

the affirming life 

within whatever corset 

she desires to impose,

paying the price herself by

falling away, diminishing

her harried body;

a mite beaten down, but

still enough and more than

to house what's left

and there's plenty plenty

of that Pam Pam Pam

of deviant vigorous life

to frighten the world to silence.    

Never the Twain

While evening fell,

slow and sober,

dulling down to dusk

and the streetlights finally 

showing up in the gloaming,

a petty galaxy of bright sodium 

to lead the way,

my gaze passed to the pretty girl

at the kiosk- was she safe to engage?

Was her truculent liege

waiting in the wings,

ready to kick me to oblivion?

Uneasy, pondering these possibilities

or defilements, I provided 

a new landscape, a scenario

based on incipient lust and fear,

isolating other fictions 

of place and time, 

making a new space 

from the overwrought flowering 

of a restless mind.

Suddenly, naked as Adam

there I was, someplace

out of this world,

under a cloudless sky.

The suns, brighter than

that earlier sun shining

on Jericho's unfallen walls,

blasted across a great green desert

glittering with heat and mica;

I saw I was not alone,

a naked blonde came closer

not at all beckoned,

but moved with hostile diligence

toward trembling waiting me.

Stuck in place like a boundary post

no lustful thoughts crossed my mind,

not one quiver at the nozzle's end;

she looked bigger than life,

a rushing Amazon,

dangerous with bad intent.

Strong sans grace,

resolute sans dignity

she moved closer,

her tremulous breasts disturbing

the beautiful still curves

of the lone and lifeless desert.

Rooted in every way I stood.

Closer she came.

Should I hold out my arms?

Prepare for combat or love?

Can strangers thus met be friends?

One more stride

and she stood in front of me;

I could smell her sweat,

feel her breath on my cheek,

her warm hand holding mine.

Before the first kiss, 

engagement before penetration,

quick as a wink

sand and scene melted away,

leaving a chasm

deeper and deeper

than any crater on the moon,

meteor hole gouged in earth;

the two of us,

Amazon and Adam,

falling together,

untangling 

in wild despair;

in the dying alien sky

a void revealed,

a collapse of substance

marking the end, the finale 

of my improvised reality.

The two of us,

Amazon and Adam,

disappeared forever,

soap bubbles blown by children.

My willful stretch of fantasy

torn away like a tent in a storm,

I returned to my certain earthly existence,

right back to the kiosk;

the girl just leaving

gave me a passing glance,

already a million miles away;

no thoughts of horizontal persuasion

in our humdrum human equation;

one brief moment 

stripped away lecherous meditations;

in the mirror of my lonely eyes,

corrupting her as Narcissus

corrupted the pond, the reflection

sorrow of sorrows!

not of her, but of me.

What History Teaches

Follow a variety of interests;

take pleasure

in what history presents.

Actual government?

No, but Rome in a ring

with the other beasts.

Xerxes returning

commends our own times,

commends the fierce grace

of automobiles. 

Time and chance afford 

us only one opportunity.

Although the ages

do not alter us, 

this is not the fault

of old men.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. He has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. He has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.