I: The Ship of State
The way a carp's speckled brown and white head
flashes just below the surface of the Potomac
night waters, Richard Nixon's penis almost enters
the national consciousness, as a thin gold thread
of urine stitches him to an August night in 1973,
on the stern of the Sequoia. Standing beside him
is the Cuban financier Bebe Rebozo, who is also
pissing into the river. The image is a small shame
in the middle of many greater ones: the damp dots
on his pants as he shakes off with an awkward
drunk step back and zips up: the president pissing
on the Republic, over which he stands. Exposed
briefly before being pulled back below decks,
the two men are easy targets for anyone's
anger or condescension. Jowly, soft with
the executive spread of men in the area before
exercise was invented, their bodies bulge oddly,
pumpkin-like growths swelling the crotches
and stomachs of their pin-stripped suits, as if
their own flesh had risen up against them. But for
the marksman stationed near, their appearance
at his post is an allegation he'd die to deny. Eyes
trained to see elsewhere, he holds his cool
weapon and a bead drops from the little jungle
of his armpit as twin diesel engines push the boat
past the riverbank where the hippie who jumps up
to grab a Day-Glo Frisbee out of the air hears
their voices and mistakes the drunken laughter
of two old men in a boat for the drunken laughter
of two old men in a boat, unaware that History
is passing so close he's breathing its exhaust,
its strain of scorched fuels distinct for a few
seconds and then folded back into the ordinary
summer night smells of mass transportation
and river water. We now know on this particular
August night they're shifting funds, arranging pay-offs
for the plumbers and harassing Henry the Jew,
denying they've even heard of Cambodia, as they sail
several martinis outside anyone's jurisdiction.
For these and other crimes, may they be lodged
in the sulphurous cavern of Satan's anus forever.
But what of the genuine warmth all the biographers
agree burnt between these two men, the actual, human love they felt for each other: is it only the gaseous fire of butane tentacles wrapping around
a bushel of asbestos logs in the below-deck bar's
mahogany dark, or is it the quicksilver spirits
in the funneled glasses they lift to each other,
a whisper of vermouth tasting like amnesia
in the gin's frostbitten false fire, the warmth
in each sip drawing them closer together?
II: From the Apocrypha of Bebe Rebozo
3.
Protesters under the cherry trees: notice
how each fallen petal rots from the inside
with a small brown dot on its delicate center-seam,
like a piece of used toilet paper:
so corruption is essential in us. It's in our guts.
7.
The young no longer dance.
Instead they twitch, as if
their electric guitars were electrodes
taped to their genitals. If only.
But their children will rediscover
the steps they abandon
and follow them back to us.
12.
Richard, I dreamed we walked the fine silver sands
shoring the Bay of Pigs, and there, beside your wing-
tip's tip, we found a gull poking its bill into the gills
of a still-living fish. Out in the surf, girls' voices called
for your attention as Tricia and Julie came riding shoreward
on the crests of waves; and this length of scaled muscle
was eaten alive at our feet, drowning in our oxygen.
III: 19—: An Elegy
Apollo. Bebe Rebozo. Beatniks.
The Car. Counting backwards.
Cold Warriors. The century
I was born in. Disney. The Great
Depression and Anti-Depressants.
Everest. The Evil Empire. Electric
light and atomic energy. Frost
at Kennedy's Inaugural. Fucking.
Free love. Gridlock. Harley-Davidson
and Hell's Angels. Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh.
The Ivory-billed woodpecker. The Iron
Curtain. Joke: how many right-wing
neo-conservative, conspiracy theory,
survivalist, NRA, MIA, VFW,
free-market, anti-establishment
radio talk show host-loving loners
does it take to screw in a light bulb?
The Killing fields. Love-Beads.
Love-Ins. Love Canal. The Mall
of America. Medical waste. Richard
Nixon. No one's home. The century
when oral sex came into its own.
The overdose. People. Peaceniks.
Plutonium. Post-. Pop-. Plastic-wrapped
bundles of cocaine washing up
on Florida beaches. Queer theory.
Race. A small car like a stereo
on wheels, the Soul-Singer's voice
tearing through paper speaker cones
the way the spirit is formed and deformed
by the flesh. The century of the Teenager.
Televangelists. Uncut. Unadulterated.
Vietnam. Watergate. World Wars. The X-ray.
Yeah Yeah Yeah. Zen Koran. Grown Zero.