Phantom Laundry Page 2

  If you do not wish here, do not die here. Trade my cherry-chopping, Wooden-Toothed Father Country for the Gopher and Ocean territories, toss in my Outer Where and my unmentionables, my Banana Republicans, my near extinct American Eagles, my Urban Legend Outfitters, usery all my fifty and most unvisited colonies in a line-up of loose slivers in grooves, scald my lukewarm waiters, spin the permanent depressions until the colors run out of analog time and the human wrinkles appear. Wet and cold my country, where the softener seeps in but the powder burns still in washing tone.

  legy

  I love the one leftover bastard sock. The unknown sock who died for the body of his country, even an Achilles shitheel. A petition please, a memorial for the unknown lone tube, fluted column, a hole for the piggy to go broke to stroke market. Celebrate new rationed holiday, every year you get a sock monkey good for stowing ganja and Malibu Stacey valentine notes. The annual sock and buskin of barefoot ballerinas breaking a toe en pointe. In your stocking feet cross the live coals, the ones you got last Christmas in the toe of the Santa booty. Knocking socks off entails some pussyfooting.

  Good stockings breathe, but don't hold your breath. Or just put a sock in it and grow a pair.

  Will You Marry It

  Open twenty-four or 420. Where claw machines drop on endangered effigies, little devils learn to hunt Raygun, Speed Freak, Little Red Raiding Hoodlum. Serfs on the Worried Wide Web will find wank for independent hands to do. Ever the dewy mountains and Fujis and white rocks, and sirens louder than Woodstock colors screaming blotty blue murder if you grab these fizzy elixirs. A quarter gets a whole rubber ball or a gold toy that rings true and green on the pretend bride's finger.

  Resume, Exhumed

  Work at the dummy corporation, make dummies and topiary the hedges, wear casual but know biohazard's better. Silkwoods have been axed to make silk Oxfords, eunuch forms must rinsed and repeated be in weekly absolutions. Lo in slacks, Dolores on the dotted line. An out-of-body auto reply pulls in from the mainframe mystics. Power suitable only for the insoluble dry gleaners who launder dough and drink blood money, waving red sheets to ire the iron bull. Fortune bank-tellers keep baker's hours, sweeping clean the deck and scouring the starved constellations for stark breakers and the Gipper in Heaven who videotapes a spot for GE's new miracle machine.

  Are We Here Yet

  No gullible travels here. Island package deals abandon ship from held-up, licked-page magazines. Street filmstrips monogamy, day dog wretching on bungee. Stare into the wishwashy glass, a convex crystal ball, no five-star last resort vista but a plenty for woolgathering. Hear me out: airplane window, refracted nosebleed waitresses and the dozing economy classroom, then a downward gawk into the Land of Lakes thick with lords of flies, the surge pissing out the meth labs and crop circles but not the hard-won Bunyan crop.

  Last Wash

  Folderol, squares for the hips, patchwork family smears from Chef Boyardee or a white picket family's house hubby's tuna helper. Said Lady MacDonald, screw the curdled milkshake container to the utility pole's sticky post. What tenderness in smoothing over the delicacies, overalls and overnothing arguments. Noggin's a sleeve or a sieve in the laundry. That's why a water-logged

  call-log phone stays in lining, pocket darkness a staycation photo-op. Blue genes predict illness and genius, the Oshgoshbegones. Lost receipt for iceberg, adopted a highway. When runs out of hands, puts mouth where the money went, taken and running.

  Angels of History

  In Caesar's month, with Caesar's wife a year from grassy-knoll Dallas and pillbox hat, Marilyn relaxed her pillowcase blondes on Egyptian cotton. Conspiracy a high thread-count, heads will role in Cuba and the See Eye Ape. Why was the nurse running the washer when the fuzz blew in?

  Bleaching the deathbed linens where the something gave, where the Camelot brothers briefly flashed their Excaliburs between the sheaths. When in Rome, put asp to coliseums like coal-eyed Liz, Eddie Fisher go belly-up. In come waterbeds then hardly ever, the swinging sixties a stone pendulum when Monica's jizzed dress becomes Kenneth Starr's witness. Dribble night-club soda, knead salt from Lot's wife into the blotch but lay off the sweet gash, our duvets and dirndls and lemonades make virgin again.

  Brand-Name Bardo

  Heart, red candy between I and New York on the boy-beater, heart my bare-knuckle boxer, my Alcatraz, the great old god Pan-Am is dead! Fallen the Great Alexander, taken the Belle from the Atlantic, the Atlantic married to the Virgin, in every plane the No Smoking sign eternally burning. The Wiz was beat in the end, his outlet oz's windows soaped over, and my wool's worth can't get be got in a city scattered with Domino's and Subways at ground level. Chemical or Fleet, the Fog Bank still rolls in, enduring painful withdrawal for a rare euphoric deposit deficit. If only the voicestream were real, chill fountain to baptize the toes hoofing makes numb and the fingers that grow me numbers. Aphrodite's Cleaners, mergered and acquisitioned by a red-eye one-night stand messenger, giving birth to Hermaphrodite. All, the red-pepper colored bottle promises, All the ever-loving mother of Nothing, a phrase only a mother could.

  Where the Morning Pours Gold through Finger-Streaked Glass Doors

  The Till Man puffs his Camel for energy and so. Baby mamas or tweens done puttering. No client beside me, a B-side, I was and am besides myself, the rumpled stilts and skin all shrunken. Even the alone's not quite. At best some chip off the old city's Eeyore eyeless as Oedipal underwear in the Dust and Frowning bin. Fork-tongue poster warns that few in management take some blame for lost or damaged eyesores. The light FM tines of tinfoil on fillings.

  Eh, Put the Lame One In

  Singles, bars, counter throat culture. Prince Albert, Jack the Ripper, weak fabricator, champ shredder.

  Love and carriage sittin in a family tree, first comes fire department. Wedding weak wires finding two of everything, bi one get wanton free. Not the best man, only a groomed horse. Hard luck for the girl to be the apple of her man's eye before the Sera Money, one question popped like a mylar bubble. Want my sickness and health, must be a hitcher who cocks the thumb and clips the flipping bird.

  Spirits and Whispers

  Hardly any talkies in the underworld. In lieu of speaking ill of the dead soak them again in Lethe before wearing once more for old time's stack. The ropes between tenements sheeted with phantom laundry sheets now. Let the glass not look so a spook don't find a likeness to its liking. Sages smudging the threshold and cartouche with themselves, frottage and some enchantment. Oiling their hands as the Tin Man did, a lid put on the voices of hinges who whine for the last word.

  Pacific Heights

  Advice from Hitchcock to a fan: if baths and showers scare your wife, take her to the cleaners. The teachers of English object to the tag The Birds is Coming. Later Hitch hands Tippi's girl Melanie a Barbie in a wooden box that Melanie reads as Mommy in coffin. Mad birds not enough for Tippi, she and Melanie make a flick called Roar about lions, MGM cats that bellow about Art for Part's Sake. Then Pacific Heights, where Melanie spies on Tippi's character through binoculars, a facelifted debutante who bumps uglies with Keaton, not Buster or Diane but Michael. Characters who make waves sink without trace. Better the fringe side, not rocking boats. Stay off the corpse-it ladder, Belushi, if you want keep the topless girl in the animal's house.

  Sisters (1976, Brian DePalma)

  The blue funk man cometh, two-faced January, cross-eyed squatter. Come as far as Gilmore's jailhouse bride I have, eyeballing the washing machine's transom. Pepto-pink mini bikini a salmon in a sere riverbed. Bakery next door makes gingerbread men not for catching, skedaddle instead back to railroad room for a splatter picture with the Lois Lane actress before she was Lois Lane. Favorite scene in the Staten Island madhouse? The patient who declines to take the ringing baby from the cradle. Thinks germs swim right through the wires. That's how I got sick, talking on the telephone. I never call and I never answer.

  Nights and Weekends

  Mother Load's ready, can't
you go punch the red button, get the hell-heat out of the kitchen? Them spin doctors impatiently heave the gross national products from the vortex. Chicken cages on wonderless wheels a free ride for children who color safe, inside the true lies. Sheep down for the count, the closed circus TV never gets any shut-eye. Wool wants to be a compound of light.

  Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977, dir. Richard Brooks)

  Terry Teryaki alone not lonely, rather be seduced than comforted. Tried all night. Busy, busy, busy. Mothergrabber. Candlefucker. Hiya suckers. Taken for a hooker by a pimp and played for a sucker by a dick. Like you, light and dark, on and off, now I seed you, now I don't. Honolulu Hilton, hula hula, hallelujah, happy new year before the cockin cockroaches take over the world. Ah yes love, here lies love and lies, lies, lies. Love don't move the balloon, fuck and punch do. Volare. Oh. Oh.

  Genesis

  Save the eight-day-old earth by putting back the dirt. Ring around the collar leads to pocket full of paunchus pilate. Lux the sinners, treat the sin. With new Blizzard Pen, hell freezes over, grass blood lifting to go back when none misses them. My untickled ivories, once pearl-cream white, are turning Listerine green. I'm failing much bitter now. Illegal to dump an urn, don't down fall. Where the duds go milky and hair bungs every drain.

  Holiday Special Children

  Sally Superstition sows her acres with salt, Loveless Lucy pelts sniveling Linus with insecurities like a hausfrau beating area rugs against rocks, Patty Pepperspray gets filthy rich making dirty bombs, no longer a germaphobe Schroder scales the piano with his skin flute, Brown Charlie rinses in secret his skid marks, Neutered Snoopy keeps nose clean, and poor Pigpen dies of smut, pollution rising from his carcass, sooty clouds no Peanut can decipher.

  Penelope and Others

  Once a pig always a pig, the traveling hero from Icky The proves his wife's loyalty by carving the marital bed from the trunk of a living cyprus. A wet nurse's washed his feet, uncover a childhood nick. All the unsuitables lie in a heap like sprayed roaches. Moly's torn and most whole.

  Necessity, Invention

  In Brentwood, house of Crawfish, if you clean a floor, you have to move the tree. Buys

  three-hundred dollar dresses her daughter treats like some dishrag. Rare steak kept for breakfast means vitamins, wire hangers twist into reasons well known to them for disinheritance. Comets over the bathroom tiles, Christina sees stars if that flaw is not spotless, spits out box-office poison.

  Wetness Protection

  Hell other people's metaphors: as a whistle, wipe the slate, one's plate, a hound's tooth, my bill of health, squeaky. The snow a falling pinheaded angel with a dirty slush Cagney face, losing features into the gravy rain. One, two, wet my overshoe, the goody on the sidewalk's not fit for human contamination. Picnic afters, ants checking into the red velvet Waldorf cake. Salt of the earth or dregs, fruit-fly and multiply. Mornings the grounds all drink from.

  Tearoom Insider Trading

  Horse pucky, the Golden Shower rule that makes all men aim for the pink deodorant puck. A starbuck for their thoughts, a check signed with triple X's for their tearoom trade. Born with a for a good time caul. Circumseam in the Chiquita, steamed meat mates teams. In the sauna the circle of horny glories speedo the plowing for a foreskins game. The one who dies little first, wins.

  Famous Last Words

  I'm Cammie Lee Marsh Green who tried to Warn Yous, Eye Rack or Eye Rave or Eye Ran will nuke ya, thanks for using my ass as railroad. Glad I'm sailing away with the rock, pricked by Governor Bush's reelection jazz needle. Bought a pressure cleaning business for my first girlfriend, with everything I had she ran off. Lewis Fell for me after I beat him with his Cain and Abel. Should be burned then cleaned, some scumbags are like that. Said he was saving my eyes for the grand finale and I lost ties over this. At BCI, Mrs. Delicate Cauter trashed all grievances and turned the pressure up on the com. Ninety-nine point forty-four mendacious lies from Republican Pictures. One time I didn't wash my food off was sick two weeks almost died. They were using sonic pressure, crushing my head in. Jesus is going to be there, all the Angel Islands. It's gonna be more like an episode of Star Wreck.

  Pinned Bulletin

  Put another courter in and try again, Hipstina and Hipstopher need to dry their Converse and Reversible takeovers. Bullied by the communally bored. Button the Kitten lost on Thank God it's Good Friday, 1960. Murse and Manny seeks full-time full-of-yourself empowerment. Good with animal magnetism and stepford alien children of the corn. Joanie loves ChaCha despite his pitstains.

  Rosemary’s Baby (1968, dir. Roman Polanski)

  All of them witches, what they must spend on robes and jewels, pierced ears and piercing eyes, his father's eyes. Can no longer associate myself. Easy, easy, you've got me too high. Not mad about the good luck smell, hate the basement for giving creeps but must clean Hutch's crepes and Guy's New Yorker shirts. There's a closet behind that secretary, I know there is. Typhoon! Try chalky undertaste and snips and snails and saperstein's tails, milk or no milk. Bitten by a chocolate mouse don't change the program on my account. Try to sleep. They'll be waiting. Up on deck.

  Namedropping (1)

  Karma Sutures Lethal Sequels laughing all the way to the Burbank. Instigate wardrobe malfeasance, retrace Bran Pit Stop maleware insensitivity chip. Marlon wants electric eel power for his jalopy streetcar in Paris. Phoenix, cruise away from Viper. Reese right Jack Nicholson and Jill in Hall, Streeping the Goldie Horn Lox. Collapsing stars: Efron Ephron Eff Bomb; Joan of Arkham Asylum. Such Miss Spent pilot season in Model Ford clinic where learned some Copenhagen skills. It's Sunday the Fifteenth and all the slash and burn teens are driving over the missed daisies. House of greenspan, red graves, this Chinese theater disclosed for mainstreaming.

  Desolate Housewives

  All the alewives and fishwives; the furniture husbands not even solid enough for lumbar support; the bowling-champion trophy wives, who become burnished drudges; the animal husbandry, no matter how paltry or cockeyed the act of cockbreeding for cockfighting, all must be declared; the one whom I can deduct as dependant, grant green card or pear-shaped baguettes from Zale’s in SoHo; whom I can keep house with long enough to be ruled by the common law; who prove that Eros and Errors are sister-wives like polygamous Mormons, or like wives-in-law, the pricy Brazilian-waxed street girls who share day-of-the-week bling and the same shiny pimp-daddy.

  For Frances Elena Farmer

  I fire a salvo in the electronic bidding war for Frances Farmer's Anarchist Cookbook. Too many parents ebbed her tide, raged her rhythms. How could the Golden toast of new york boy come and forget her? Set on boulevard, sun rise for some on highway. With Little Sister acting all Big Brother, there would rarely be a morning. Ghost appearances on This is Your Life and Today before she died, had a show she once called Frances Farmer Prevents. No Escape? AKA I Escaped from Nazis. As the blackbird in the spring, neath the widow tree. I'm like her now. Clean now, never been so clean. God died a useful thing.

  Ode to Onan

  Spun and spent and one sea fits all. Nines moons in the before you can say knife. Birth's a decent exposure, maybe the only. Twelve groundhogs later it emerges: my hairy palms, my blindnesses, my slippery second tense. I plead the filth. If hands are brothers, one brother's the better keeper, one washes the missing other and both save the face. Don't fill out a report for tadpole massacre, yet paper trails me to the spanking new.

  Flip, Scan, Replay

  Results may vary when drywashing brain and preshrinking head, but the plate in my head matches well my dish saddled with light. My lint filter's a platter of Cosby sweater thread. O mother city of assassin initials: JFK, JR Ewing. Heidi projects runaways in miniskirt challenges and elimination rounds, Archie Bunker earns a chair in malapropism. Mary Hartman, married heartland. Blighted rosies, riveting, keep us in stitches, thornbirds in our side. Give me your Tupac and Cobain.

  Juvenilia

  And those were the children who nab the clothes i
n the morning, gussied up the depilated grownup trees. Mufflers overalls underthings all the heretics and penitents, whole hometown plucked from a line where it can't know it's waiting, all the king's dark horses and straw men. The blue hour that leaves black and blues will Etch-a-Sketch gnarly shadows like a kind of puberty. Mute funds chime payoffs, penalties and solitudes appreciating like piggy bank savings accounts. But nevermind. That's a never better than a letter. Minus girdles and straps, trappers and worms in this early bird's light, these few. And some like flowers attract mouths without a stink-eye window factory to bark On the Double.