PETER
DAVIS
Hitler’s Mustache: One Mustache
Aspect
THE FAKE MUSTACHE
This mustache
leads you to believe that a mustache is not what you think but something
exceedingly more mustache. As a mustache, with matching eyebrows, sideburns and
pubic hair, this mustache knows a new sorrow. It is sick with its mustache lie.
Understand. A
whole mustache has grown on my tonsils, a mustache
thatches the roof of my tongue. Mustache in every spoonful of
soup and in every toothbrush.
Sore, on his ass,
a real fuck-wad, comes Adolph Hitler. His mustache was
in trouble
with local law-enforcement. Teenage vandalism, etc. The juvenile
delinquent mailbox smasher in all of us.
Mustache tattooed on his foreskin.
MUSTACHE JOKES
I was telling
myself a joke about three mustaches that walk into a bar:
The first
mustache says, “I’m lonely, could I have a drink made of something other than
mustache?” The bartender gives him a drink made entirely of the hair from a
sideburn. The first mustache says, “Wow, that’s delicious.” The second mustache
says, “I’m tired, can I have a drink made of something other than face-hair?”
The bartender gives him a drink made entirely of the hair off the top of his
head. The second mustache says, “Thanks, this is terrific head hair.” The third
mustache says to the bartender, “I’m bored, can I have a drink made of
something other than boredom?” The bartender gives him a drink made of
mustache. The third mustache says, “What’s this? I’m not a cannibal!” And the
bartender says, “Well you look like a mustache to me.”
I also said:
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Mustache.
Mustache who?
Must you stash
your mustache in my knock-knock joke?
And then I said:
What’s the
difference between a mustache and a black hole?
A black hole
isn’t attached to your face and growing from your face pores.
Or
A mustache isn’t
a theory of modern physics, but sitting on your upper lip.
And then I said:
What do you get when
you cross a ridiculous, face-fur mustache with Adolph Hitler?
A dictator afraid of the shadow beneath his nose.
And I said:
Take my mustache,
--please!
THE FASHIONABLE MUSTACHE
The situation of the
mustache is one of fashion and
it’s quite possible that the situation
of the mustache
has been exaggerated to make the
situation more mustache,
but, in all honesty, making the
mustache situation
more mustache is largely impossible.
It’s a fact
that though a million things happen in a
lifetime, the mustache
stretches across the horizon in the manner of
a mustache
and has all of the grace of a Greek
bird, a mustache god
that sits in judgment of all mustache
assessment and must be
gazing down at me with a tear in his
mustache.
He may wonder
when the golden mustache era
will begin, when from ashes arising, the
mustache shall
wing free from this earth, this smother
mustache,
this razor that nips it, this hand on
the mustache throat?
Oh, who knows? Mustache, probably.
My mustache, my
mustache! Screams the woman.
As she flips
through her magazines she notices mustache
advertisements and she senses
impending mustache.
Careful, she
thinks to herself, The Mustache Hunter
on TV has
warned of this sort of thing. He says
mustache
falls into the category of carnivore. His
mustache
is persuasive. There is nothing about
a mustache
that cannot be caught, trapped and
renamed by a mustache.
It’s called
history repeating itself and the mustache
in this sentence has been trimming and
tidying this mustache
for so long, the mustache is back in
style.
HITLER’S MUSTACHE: ONE MUSTACHE ASPECT
You have a
father, a mother, they are dead or alive or friendly or unfriendly or known to you
or unknown. In whatever case, we are all alike in that way. All like solid
square hairs in that light. All standing on end and
stretching up, reaching high, at attention. In that black way we are
identical.
Even if I set aside my own feelings and politics, my own
sensibilities and aesthetic, my jagged teeth and my jagged kneecaps. I have set my Merle Haggard records on fire
and am baking burnt biscuits for
din-din.* Hope you’re coming soon. I need help.
So, in this case,
(as the banker said to the farmer) it seems important to introduce the idea
of the lie fixed in my imagination.
I’m making good
headway here.** Look, I’m moving forward and spanning
the globe like a singer of popular music. My glitter shakes off on stages in
*“Yes, Caroline,
a man will do that sometimes, sometimes, if he’s lonely. And I believe a man
might do that out of spite—”
** I will gather
my potential squirrels and make a cape from the pelts of new animals, ones that
haven’t been identified by scientists, as of yet.