Soul of a Whore and Purvis (17 page)

Turned around? But what about our nukes?

…All right, rescind the order…Well, goddamn.

Then don't rescind it, if it wasn't sent.

…What do you mean? Indeed I gave the order.

[
Hangs up.
]

Apparently this thing's not functioning.

Somebody's got a load of explaining to do!

…Have we amused you? Good. Go home. Go on.

…Get on out, J. Edgar. I must nap.

They'll get us in the brain, right in our soft

Impressionable minds. They'll get us in

The coffee houses and the beatnik poems.

Our spoiled little hairy little children

Dancing in the psychedelic light.

A fond adieu, Your Excellency.

[
As he dons his clothes, he addresses the hanging corpse.
]

…Hook the jug by the ear and hoist it up

For a little smooch. Wonder what I'd do

If somebody ordinarily decent ever

Entered here? Feller like that Purvis.

'Pologize for entertaining in

My skivvies. Turn my liquor breath away.

President of travesties and favors.

Faithful of the balance. Figuring it

To tip down finally on the attractive end.

Unreasonable, childish hope:

And bless you, sojer, may you never spy

The thumbs of bought historians and hostage

Propagandists weighting the boonful side.

I'm traveling to the South week after next.

O, I'll meet Purvis marching in the sunshine:

Son of light, master of undisguise…

The South, well—down there, certain airs bring back

The sweetness of a childhood I no longer

Find at all believable, of years

I must have dreamt.—Why did I ever waken?

O, I was a knobby little man.

Sir: I put the skinny in skinny-dipping.

Flailing in my slow descent, screaming,

Splashing, the cooling shadow of the bluff

Blanketing us and it all echoing…

I used to like to be the last to leave.

I'd stay there lonely with my chin on my knees,

There by that slow water at the bend

Where right about that time of afternoon The dragonflies dipped down to drink.

And I'd come running for my father's house,

Hot all over again in the last light,

Thudding like a quarter horse for home,

Falling flat and slurping up the crick.

Lord, that water went down sweet.

…Never since then a truly slakable thirst…

Clyde, ring up the
Post
. Ring up
The New York Times.

I want those rats to promise me he stays

Entombed on the obituary page,

Or certainly never crawls as far as four,

That he rises no higher than five, not one page higher,

And keeps to the lower half. One column inch.

No photograph!—The clown without a face.

I want this cloaked and shrunken in the stench

Of his self-murder.
And
: no Dillinger!

Dillinger broke the law, the law broke him:

Let the glory be the law's, and not

Its instrument's, the late, lamented Marvin.

I own he was a modest instrument.

He didn't slaver after glory, merely

Postured himself so it accrued to him.

—Do you know what the poor wretch was reduced to?

Tomorrow his admirers will read

That after a stint with breakfast cereal

He wandered into radio. Somewhere

Down south he kept the farmers in the know

And jazzed it up for barnyard animals.

O, my God, the leader of a horde

Of Junior G-men! Lovely!—Suicide!

The Baptists promise Hell for that, I think.

Dear God, I pray he was your Baptist son.

“Onward Junior G-he-he me-hen

Marching as to war! With the cross of Pur-vis—”

Purvis was the perfect name for him.

He was perverse: He purposely, perversely

Projected a lovelorn, stoic decency;

I believe it to have been primarily prideful,

Perverse and prideful. Are you calling the
Post
?

No mention of museums!—The the the the

South Carolina—nothing of the kind.

“On then, Junior G-men, on to victory.”

From the rooftops?

To fail to listen.

Or Melba Toast—how did you get the news?

Why would I be moved to eulogize

Some suicidal platter-spinner? No.

Let him be known as the sometime president

Of the Carolina Broadcast News Assembly.

Like a helium-bloated parade animal.

I want no mention made of Dillinger!

Or Baby Face or Pretty Boy or Cutie

Pie or Pooh the Bear or—infants' icons!

Clyde, have you seen the wrestlers in Mexico?—

And all these gangsters wore personae like

The Mexican wrestlers do—Clyde, we must get

Immediately half a dozen fearful

Masks from Mexico, and you and I

Shall wrestle.

Should you care to look. Let me get your suit.

Purvis and his gangsters shot it out

Across the landscape, but, Clyde, by and large

They played cops and robbers.
We
fight
wars
.

Our enemies are ideologies,

And we must smash the vessels that purvey them,

And not just this one or that one—all of them:

Black or Communist or Ku Klux Klan,

All are rationales for disorder,

All are threats to peace and order,

All will wax to a size to challenge

Eventually authority and justice—

John, the temple is going to burst asunder.

But in the man's defense—what now?

Get dressed.

Consistency and elegance of concept—

Sort of a black veil because a tragic villain

Happened to possess them? I refuse.

The goose step is both ominous and silly,

I warrant, but in the man's defense, he didn't

Invent the goose step…

He instituted the control of guns.

We need such a law ourselves, do we not?

May I point out that whereas the Negro may have

To swim up waterfalls to cast a vote,

He nevertheless may purchase firearms?

OF MARTIN LUTHER KING.

You have a two p.m. appointment with

Senator Johnson.

From Cowturdania. Him a good ol' boy.

One call and his whole afternoon is mine.

He'll drop the German chancellor for me.

Bring me a deck of cards.—We'll play gin rummy!

—In our underwear!

He'll play rummy with me if that's my pleasure,

And in his undershorts, if that's my pleasure.

But I think I'll save that game for the Oval Office,

And play it with the president half-naked.

Cremation, and his ashes on the wind.

Go fish. He's got a really enormous dick.

We'll have a round of crazy eights if I

Decree it.

Often he pulls it out to drive a point home.

“Mao's got China but he ain't got nuthin' lack 'is.”

Unless he's reading from a page the man's

Aphasic. Now we've given him a button

He can push to set off World War Three.

Push it all day long, he won't succeed

In summoning a shoeshine.

When is supper? Should I be home for supper?

—Jay, back.—First in costume, now half-naked.

Only that the windows of Director

Hoover's Georgetown mansion wink

With images of a runaway mannequin.

“Hoover was a fascist bureaucrat, a spy

For Adolf Hitler, shredder of the Bill of Rights”—

And that's if I succeed. But if I fail:

“Hoover let the tendrils of a cancer

Flourish in the very neck of God and choke him

To death.”

What does it matter? The earth swallows us all.

Behold Melvin Purvis: who led a life,

Who strove, triumphed, prospered, failed, declined,

And perished, and tomorrow at three p.m.

Rejoins the elements; and the same awaits

The ones he left to mourn him,

All of us forgotten in the dirt.

—Where's my Marcus Aurelius? Where's my Marcus Aurelius?

I must read him every morning, a few lines—

“Hoover with his secret files and blackmail!”

As for a slave.

I want no mention made of Dillinger.

I will not stand to have the
Post
cry down

The roll of dust-bowl tommy-gunner rubes.

“Pretty Boy,” “Machine Gun,” “Baby Face,”

“Legs” and “Dutch” and “Bugsy.” Dillinger.

This suit's too blue.