6 Poems by
David Spicer
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COJONES
Black-haired Ute clutches the computer
on the Grand Canyon cliffs: since her
exotic affair with the kinky dictator,
innuendo for the avant garde taints itself
with guillotine comments
to Hollywood cohorts she wishes executed.
Beside her the rich terrier Sidney barks, an
ultimate showcase for fireplace canines.
Today Ute models the latest in nuclear
T-shirts: she is the newest media icon,
a movie-star shrink of Eden, Arizona.
A mythic party of fifties flunkies
now her family and mistress--despite
the birth of a girlfriend a footnote
to this hour's salad of rocks and cacti--
she chats with a haberdasher, bumps
into the peddler who rummages
through tapes she keeps for reference.
Later this evening Ute must answer a summons
for breach of the peace, and decides to bring
pornographic videos of committee policy. Her
notion of a fair trial makes little sense,
so she doesn't stop short of acting the role
of an eternity to strip their cojones
clean of dignity, sleeping
with great calm until noon.
PRECAUTION
The cheerleader wore a headband
every time she attempted suicide
because she missed other forms of affection
from a stepmother and her husband.
Masturbation made her nervous,
rhetoric useless unless she whined.
After an argument over a hairdresser
boyfriend and a quarrel with her father's
secretary, Blanche banned shame from life,
stole the last coke from the icebox
to hitch a ride from a truckdriver
who resembled Clark Gable. Possessing a penchant
for sixties music and a veteran talent
of slash and bullet battles, Harry struck
a bargain with Blanche to travel escalators in this
country's malls and become artists
of infant snatching. Creating the prototype
of a special crime that editors and other journalists
loved them for, they placed bicycle chains around
victims' necks in a sublime execution style.
Hiding in amphitheaters to drink imported wine
and inhale Turkish tobacco, they proved every crisis
engineered another strain on one's mind,
didn't panic as a matter of principle.
They learned to leave a trail without breath on it,
for cops rarely missed a detail. Harry and Blanche
continued to run, always on the road, anticipating
that wonderful motocross of murder.
INGA
"It's too bad Hitler didn't study Zen"
the blonde informed me over spaghetti
in the hotel restaurant. I replied
he was the ultimate vampire hiding false teeth
behind a bowtie. "He would've loved rednecks"
she quipped, as though repeating a rumor
that spanned decades. My stomach bloated,
we left after the camera-toting parolee snapped
our photo for a five. Thin hair belied
the appeal in his gleaming glance, signature
of a con man on the make. We refused an offer
of new dope--"Holy Fire, the current sentence
of lovely death," he called it--grabbed the check
and fled the plastic slot machines for the room
designed by a champion. We both grabbed the shy
terrain of our personalities, silent for the first
time that evening, no longer searching
for a utopian treasure, together in a room
empty as an earthquaked stadium. Finally
she offered, "We could watch Dr. Zhivago and be
anathema to our cynical selves," looked at me
with an inventory of pain, and disappeared
like a beautiful switchblade.
ZOE
Zoe, a golden sociopath green-eyed
and the envy of quarterbacks, clomped
Australian boots down the primadonna
catwalk every Friday and infected
the innocent with a smug delivery.
His profile in the shadow of the sleeping-soul
audience floated like a daffodil in
a goblet of burgundy. The gloved voice
with its spooky twang paralyzed the city
like a diseased echo, for Zoe never talked
but whispered propositions of epidemic mayhem:
when he winced, dollars exchanged hands
among ghosts negotiating behind smokestacks.
He married the senator's druggy daughter
at an airport brunch, slid the ring
around her finger fluid as the tea he drank
with his wedding cake. Later dragged her
to a private jet, smoothed his hand under
the gown's fabric and looked across the black
field of night to see skyscraper lights
translate his ethic into a reverie:
"A little piece of me dies every time my depression
lifts like a decapitated head without dental records,
and soon I will paint the town with blood, yes I
will."
VIGNETTE
My girlfriend Venus was a master nymphomaniac. She
loved Genet and
Bellini, shaved her head and pussy every day from
guilt. An atheist,
she slept on silk devastation and nightmares of biker
haircuts.
Me, I was a priggish manic depressive, a lovesick
sculptor who glimpses
at his giddy diva, his hairless dilemma.
She wore a hardhat at giggle sessions, pointed a gun
with violet
glee at my sorry heart, eluded accusations like a
callow tycoon.
One day she demanded a hypocrite sundae, the chic
drink of taupe
bathroom heirs. I slashed a pillow at her tennis
elbow. We were
suddenly a rumor of romance, hot as a stove, an aura
of
notorious
brothels our legacy.
The object of tattle gossip, we draped ourselves in
leather bracelets,
projected rhapsodies upon blind dates, admitted
nothing but a love of
salesmen and combat.
She birthed a son on the beach. Not mine. A
barrister's. I forged my
death certificate, hitched a ride to the Plaza and
watched Casablanca,
a nice movie with a shitty ending.
PRINCESS
The ballerina trendsetter ate
bananas in leather bars.
Nobody bothered her,
not even the Arab asshole with leukemia
and knives draping his pelvis.
Muzak bobbed her bangs.
Nobody wanted a blow job.
The Capricorn press agent a tattletale.
The maitre'd sported flame red hair.
He loved the ballerina.
She danced the frug
on the bartop under the limelight,
tossed one liners to writers like footballs.
The boys in the band awestruck.
Her career skyrocketed.
She bought a chateau,
gave away sable wraps,
hired a majordomo for grand parties,
reggae shattered goblets.
She scoffed in burgundy
silk-velvet blouses at twilight.
A blonde apparition to the slaves.
They followed her to Mecca
upon the Arab asshole's suggestion.
She shrugged like an idiot scapegoat,
disavowed cosmetics, shattered
illusions anyone bestowed her.
A new cachet. She called the subjects brutes,
flashed her pussy more than once,
the bouquet she never relied on.
Faxed a farewell to The Times:
"You remind me of a hailstorm,
but I'll eat pears in peace,
fondle my brooch in the garden,
and enjoy my haven
with anyone I choose.
So piss on all of you."
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