In the sun-drenched
breakfast nook, Gideon
shoots button-down cuffs,
brushing bran muffin
crumbs from his silk
paisley necktie
as he licks the bitter brown froth off
a steaming homemade Frappacino.
Then he fires up the laptop
to check a hot stock tip
against the straight skinny
stream of dispatch coming
from a confidential
blogger embedded by
General Electric in the
same Saudi business park
where the last webcam
hostage was beheaded.
Satisfied with the overall health
of his portfolio, and the short position
he's decided to take against
petroleum futures,
he leisurely logs on
to the global interactive
pornography portal,
where a skinny dishwater blonde
is shoving six pieces of Almond
Roca with all the nuts sucked off
straight into
her puckered bullseye
of a bunghole;
then,
a dusky Irish Setter
starts licking her candy
out, one piece
at a time while she straddles
the U bolt on a cherry red fire
hydrant, throwing back her
head with a Mary Pickford
howl.
When the dog starts to do the other,
predictable things with the girl, Gideon
sighs and snaps the Vaio firmly shut,
whistling on his way out the door
and off to work.
***
Straight up noon
in the electronics showroom
of a Best Buy in Clackamas
Town Center,
And Miriam stares
at the bank of high definition
giant screens lined up against
the far wall,
listening to the sallow,
twenty-something salesman
explain the latest advances
in Tivo technology:
"You see, ma'am," the kid
explains, "with our brand
new On Demand Scramblers
we're now able to customize
your viewing experience in
ways we never dreamed
before."
By way of illustration,
he clicks a complicated
keypad sequence
on a pentagonal
remote control,
and up there
on all seventeen screens the
swaggering Commander In
Chief appears— wearing a
flight jacket and
doing a fluid backpedal moonwalk
on the spit-shined deck of an
aircraft carrier,
before leaning hard
on the podium microphone
to intone the words that
bubble forth but
ever so
slightly, out of
sync,
like dialogue from
a badly-re-mastered
Japanese VHS
espionage flick:
"Of course no one likes to be occupied," says Mr.
President, "while being forced to stay the course
like bleached cattle gourds in a sandstorm lording
over the endlessly bloated dead bodies we're too
occupied to see—but it does not matter if history
views me kindly or not because we'll all be dead by
then don't you see? Don't you see?"
The salesman frowns,
and makes a furious fencer foil motion
with the remote control until
the plasma screens start
winking out
one by one at last like
pinhead novas
in a cosmic keyhole.
Meanwhile, Miriam's husband Earl--veteran
of the Vietnamese conflict with a remote of
his own clutched in a pasty meat hook palm--
starts changing the myriad channels
until he lands on Turner Super Station
playing the scene from Apocalypse Now
wherein a splayed-legged cow in a cargo net
gets hauled out of the sweltering jungle
by a Huey helicopter.
"Boo Yah!" shouts Earl, "Now that's
Art, mama! Old school with Francis
Ford am I right?"
Miriam manages
a strained smile,
while
the channels keep
on changing.
****
Six o' clock in the crowded
Starbucks on 35th and Hawthorne,
and my friend
Sergei the Slam
Poet listens on Walkman to Michael
Moore assigning Conspiracy Theory
to writer's block in a recorded
interview with Diane Sawyer.
"In other words," Sergei insists
over the headphone hiss, "screw the censor
bleep baby because they are working on
stuff now that will keep you from
thinking about saying the thing
in the first place!"
And it is
precisely then and
there that half my
rotten bottom
left molar implodes right
to the gum line when I bite
down on a rum-flavored
sticky bun,
and cattle-prodded paintballs of
animal pain shoot from eyeballs
to brain stem as I leap
from my seat,
and reel across
the floor in a red
retinal mist
like a Hemingway bull
with the last picador lance propped
in a ripcord neck.
And yes I can see
my matador
clearly enough--in a
blue velour director's high chair
on the reading nook balcony;
in her designer shades she
looks a bit like a beatific
Barbara Feldon soaking up
the after-bliss of a Maxwell
Smart tongue kiss; her
long taut legs are primly tucked
and crossed at the ankles, she bites her
tongue in total concentration while
the camcorder
whirrs and purrs
on her slim
shoulder,
and her
fingers furiously
fuck with a platinum
Palm Pilot clutched
between her honey-
brown thighs.
By now there can be no doubt
that she is making the rough cut
for my Reality Show--and will
begin uploading the footage
of my palm-hooting hot coal
medicine man fancy dance
to her producers perched
somewhere deep in cyberspace
faster than the next few
sticky shards of busted tooth enamel
and blood clots can rocket like Redenbacher
Popping Corn right down my raw throat;
by midnight we can all watch
this Me she's captured on
Pay Per View T.V. tape loop pastiche
sandwiched between Super Bowl
blimps sky writing Pepsi, Orgasm
and Mitsubishi...
but for right now
she keeps the camera so incredibly
steady in her tanned, jeweled hands--as
Sergei lurches over to lend me a Heimlich
hug, hauling us both the fuck
out of there.
Oh Christ she is
such an unbelievably
beautiful holographic
whore,
whose pixels are
projected
from a trap door in the
cream and sugar cubicle,
whose features are
coming faster and
faster into a terrible
focus the
longer I stand here
and try to pretend that none of this
is happening.
Dennis Mahagin's poems and stories have appeared in publications such as Absinthe Literary Review, 42opus, 3 A.M., Edifice Wrecked, Underground Voices, Slow Trains, Zygote In My Coffee, Thieves Jargon, SpokenWar, and Frigg Magazine. A book-length collection of his poems, entitled Grand Mal, is forthcoming from Suspect Thoughts Press.