NOTE
I
have the Cadillac blues and a migraine head,
the
piano won’t play career shattering fugues
I’ve
dreamed about in whiskey hot pants
and
rainy day schizophrenias. The basement
suffers
menopause as I compose mood pieces
about
leather turbans, silk footballs and Shetland
ponies.
Fans I hate call me the dashing wizard,
idolize
isolation, armor, and masks
I
wear at concerts of detoured malaise,
sad
barmaids, and scorched flowerheads.
As
my stature increases,
I
awake earlier each morning,
scamper
upstairs to deny a dying cult intrigue,
and
long for a khaki safari, an ontological
expedition
complete with ebony crackers.
Every
day I slap myself silly with coffee,
cattle
flesh, and polo drugs. Rumor has it
any
time now I’ll publish memoirs and discuss
my
latest necklace. Untrue. But I’ll share
secrets
from lost tapes if it’s agreed
failure
won’t menace me: shrubs ramble behind
the
shed, diseases spread through their veins,
and
I wait for my patron
to
dismiss me, for consent—the hunt
northward,
the premiere of my greatest movie.
THE DOOR MARKED EXIT
I
never could spell because I’m no
walking
dictionary and that skill
was
omitted from my DNA. I’m
an
American, for Christ’s sakes,
in
a hurry no matter the zip code
I mail
letters in. Give me
an
Indian massacre, or allow
my
unbuttoning a woman’s blouse
that
has the scent of Dior
before
I crumple it into a corner.
I
don’t even know where the Louvre is,
or
how long Queen E has reigned.
Give
me the murder channel, some apricot
schnapps,
and a little bush I can dicker
with,
I’ll be happy. I’d prefer a movie
star
with the buzz of a meteor, so don’t
label
me a monster. As long as I hum
and
can smell the pollen from a white
iris,
I won’t be in a copperhead’s mood.
But
I’ve met too many pickpockets
of
the heart who’ve skimmed my joy.
I’m
exhausted and don’t want to struggle
or
suffer—just live in a tent and collect
stamps,
mingle with the thrush
and
the hawk before I roll up in a jeep
by
a chilly deli’s EXIT door open
to
the white light that waits for no one.
RECKONING
Yes, I’m the hunchbacked auctioneer
who hugged Virginia at her wedding
in the wilderness mansion she named
Corkscrew for no
good reason. Ginny,
a small, ponytailed, redheaded jogger
who cartwheeled before she grappled
with the muck on her route, sometimes
chose to bicycle miles through moss,
lions in her animal preserve, the sheep
that grazed. I stole her journal a week
before I witnessed the marriage
of her and the local hero, a pro wrestler
named Concrete. They were a pair,
Concrete and Ginny. I was a tenant
next to their bedroom and heard them,
I swear. They bit each other—her journal
says so—and prayed, howled, threw
Krugerrands in a satchel after every sex bout.
Sometimes I heard Ginny cry between moans.
I feared for her safety, volunteered I’d slash
Concrete’s throat, but she couldn’t swallow
that solution. That was two days before
the reckoning. Concrete donned a crown
of cherries around his shaved head.
The bride wore her white jogging outfit.
Everybody applauded, and, as I mentioned,
I hugged Ginny. And then shot Concrete
in the forehead five times with my .22.
When I’m released we’re booking
a cruise along Alaska’s coast.
David
Spicer has had poems in Yellow Mama, Reed
Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, In Between Hangovers, The American
Poetry Review, New Verse News, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead
Snakes, and in A Galaxy of Starfish:
An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated
for a Pushcart, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four
chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon,
Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives
in Memphis, Tennessee.
No comments:
Post a Comment