from Phil Spectre, Or, Philadelphia
*
Phil Spectre
finishes his work, locks his gun in its case,
and shuffles of to bed, nightcap
of his better nature strapped around his jowls.
He sinks into the pillow, ears stopt with the wadding of his pulse.
Phil Spectre, noone cuckolds you.
The quaint candle hovers like a bony auntie;
hush her out. Your prayers now:
oh undig me from this wall
that I pusht over. Recompile it
like China or Oz, so the multicultural star-sailors can observe
the big score written on the earth
and the big Woman watching
before whom we are as specks of dust
can unpack her big contralto,
inhale us and hurl us from her lungs
*
gimme that parking sticker and that daypass
gimme that statue of rodin, by rodin, the one he dreamed of
nodding off to sleep before his knockout funeral: obsidian dream.
everything goes skittering off you like a rowing skull.
gimme that country you came from. I want to kiss it.
I'm like the mayor on the trail. now I hand it back to you.
you stand in front of this glittery door that opens out
of your food truck, you stand before your vinyl lettered sign.
oh gimme summore of that mustard and a Pepsi on the side.
*
I'm like the mayor on trial. I wear an enviable diadem
of listening devices. They sing whinily from the soundproofing
which is how I discovered them. I ray out in every direction
tugging a litany of agents in my wake, pretending to be
landscapers. Adjacent. Adjutant. Or, behind. I make the rounds,
shaking my fanny. I show them a good time.
I take them to all the juke joints and the rib joints.
Meanwhile, I hang cracked in my harness
in the bulletproof pavillion. I stand upside city hall,
poking at the city with my toe.
My buckleshoe. In the pilgrim hat. Yes, that's me.
*
I'm like the mayor on the trail. Phil Spectre,
you may be guilty. Guiltier than most.
But I'm not the chief of police.
We knock the stadium down nightly and build it up.
We knock it down to moondust.
Noone visited the heavens from here,
though we drew up the plans for a launching pad
grown from incorruptible cake. Though we had the dogfish
line up in our patch of ocean. They formed too dim a road.
Though we handed each kid a tiny inhaler and tamped down their houses.
Though I posed in several helmets. Eventually,
the wind changed: we gave up the plan. Some boys
went out to haul up the dogfish. They tugged and twisted
and wanted to live. They cut up the boys' hands
until the boys cut the lines. They flew off in all directions
scribbling the ocean, blurry as a second set of stars.
Which gave us the idea.
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Double Orpheus
Iron-skinned, a fetal caduceus,
it rides down through the chaparral
criss-crossed with cactus shapes. Which apparel
desiccating, decomposing, exposes
perfect thighs against the horse's flanks.
Under the smoldering agave beds
is birthed the purest element of the census.
Is birthed the purest elephant in the circus.
Dreams a cracked egg, a caul
over everything it's touched, like,
rice-wight, you hold up your throttled sack.
White grains loop from a tear at the bottom,
circling the immediate past.
Now the messenger god is kicking the other god's ass
in between painted lines. Light changes on them.
They beat their alarms into each other's chests,
forgetting their original destinations. The weary dispatcher
cannot lift her arm over such commotion.
She sighs through a hole in the mask.
This knot forms the first rung. This padlock
swallows its own tail. This mall in full regalia
inverts to an empty lot. This epithalamium
invents a square where houris turn up to form the edges,
their upturned palms the roof. These gleaming birds,
inside-out cars, pour energy over the spectators.
We're translated to a cove where voice is a cave
and the cavewalls are lined with cool teeth.
I roll my tongue over a history of the daytrades:
pictures for taxes, river for the river of light that seemed
to be its source. The light that changed on the soundwaves
in the crosswalk, her milktails like a peacock
as she flew. The sewer cap converted to a wriggling snake
that split and bloomed: double orpheus.
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