HOT PINK By Lee E. Pifer A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December 2005 Copyright by Lee E. Pifer 2005 11 HOT PINK By Lee E. Pifer This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Professor Susan Mitchell, Department of English, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letter and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. lll Abstract Author: Lee Pifer Title: Hot Pink Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Professor Susan Mitchell Degree: Master of Fine Arts Year: 2005 The poems of this thesis take the reader to primal places of the mind, body, and soul, often considered better left unspoken or unseen. These places are no doubt dark and full of strange dreams. Here, relationships have a lack of resolution and, of course, are engineered by pleasure and pain. Pain is fire, ice, or reflection. Pleasure is also pain. It is all an eternal dance. Pain gives pleasure meaning and vice versa, like violence and passion. I challenge social customs and emotional aversions with my imagery. I utilize rhyme and a lack of punctuation to disturb boundaries as dreams do, or other malleable states of living. I focus on the intangible trauma of self-destruction in the pursuit of creativity, intimacy, and expression. In simpler tenns, the poems of this thesis have been caught having a threesome with sex and death. Tempted to peek? IV For My Beloved Lorrie Table of Contents Tantric Circle ..................................................... 1 Cloud Dreams . 2 Over the Gulf I ................................................... 3 Shelly ............ ....... .. .. ...... ..... ............... .......... 4 Sexy Hell .......................................... ........... .. .5 Necromance ...................................................... 6 Hostile .. ......... ................................................9 Taboo .......................................................... 11 Double Feature ................................................... 13 Fool Me Twice .......... ·..... .................... ...... .......... 15 Hot Pink ..... ..................... ... ..................... .. ... 16 Blue Period . 17 Over the Gulf II . 18 Massacara . 19 Androgyne ............ ................ ....... .................. .. 21 Mainlined ....................................................... 24 Sycophant .. .......... ... ..... .......................... ......... 25 v Manhandled 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 26 Elsewhere 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 27 Wendy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 028 Paper Cut 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 029 Rusty Razor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 030 Over the Gulf III 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 031 Six Feet Under 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 32 Sigil 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 033 VI Tantric Circle I want you to be seized, revel in pleasurable styles of rhythm while you read under some dim or sultry lighting of your choice now let me whisper in your ear how I am mortified though I am the kind that dreams of romance and razor blades on the same line among other irrational denials cut to the bone by an electron conned into playing the role of paper and I write like I need to see everything white run red when I simply could have said I only wish to bleed all over my computer screen smear it with my fingertips screaming "this is my blood!" I pour over the page I have to stain your sensibilities with verbal throes of sex or unbalanced sorrows and so you don't have to see the spaces where I lost a bit of my soul I filled them in with superficiality when really I am reliving the point I glide over an empty stage without further blame bum it to the foundation I never said I was sound of mind but you are bound to mine so reach out, hesitate, touch this digital tree fallen here playing the role of mortified me Cloud Dreams I wish I could fly high in the sky To crash and to bum when it is my tum will be my fate even if I try to just get by but I don't care I want to soar through the air gliding about where no one would dare To sail and to dive feeling alive to alight on a tree feathery free filled to the brim with the whim of the wind singing for me To swoop and to swim above and beyond the rim of a cloud would be why I left ifl were allowed to fly 2 Over the Gulf I. Pressure squeezed the cabin in the climb to cruising height and groans of steel mimed the slow flap of wings over where iron, during the age of slavery and kings, kept the dead from wandering, out of the earth or the swamp or awaiting piles, up to living doors. The city said it was due to the river or voodoo then threw up a final message: "Would you please deliver a different view for my electric light is merely a skewed account of old fires." Then the bird banked out to sea away from the coastal pyre, and those yellow fevered souls, while ships far below in the black gulf burned bright with lantern light set on their sails and pirated rum. To reply: "Goodbye crescent, from the sky above your Sheol is sealed tight by old sufferings behind the stone and the night." 3 Shelly my creation she is most beautiful can't you see though I'm clearly mad with jealousy that she is not me but she will arise nevertheless mangled and misshapen I do confess in distress I hastily I lift her to the darkened sky breathe life into her single eye formerly mine so she may see the stitched up line of the cut across my forehead reminding her I bled for her to be 4 Sexy Hell Every day a good little boy stares at Dore's Dante, praying, should the poet fall under an assault of pitchforks and wings. Oh, I see. It's really me that abandoned hope, one hand taught against the rope, the other groping for ripened strawberries as a hungry tiger in red weather below still will certainly see her food. To that end I remember one May when reality lost all color. I spent that night bent double rubbing salt in my wounds. Had my mind not unfolded as a black and white movie would it could have stood up to porno. At least I know in my hell I can tell the difference between the fire and the silhouettes yet I can't abide the smoldering pile of childhood memories I bet against in beating me for control of all the sex I already tell the therapist I need. Take desire deep past my lips is the way to a good little girl's hips he also prays for but will never say. 5 Necromance Rub off that powder mustache. Put out Mary and Jane's mellow fellow, then follow me for we go hand in hand to a musically enthralling end. Curtsey to the quivering nether lips then enter. We are all creatures here that feature living with the lights out, and turned on by the sticky and smoky breath of fevered skin pumping against bass tones woven over moans of melody. They beckon me into her brooding womb. On the floor we dance as only the dead can, in prayer to songs of inevitable beauty in loss, change back from the cost of life.