IV. Hepzibah speaks: Laugh at Your Own Risk
On the beach I met a man a ghoul
and now I can’t get him out of my mind.
I hated him at once
because of his top-hat and tails
worn over Hawaiian board shorts bare-chested, barefoot,
he had the kind of shaggy hair they call lettuce
in the hockey world, which was what
his face looked like it belonged to;
cut cheekbones, a scar, eyes whose violent blaze
compelled you (or, at least me) against better judgment.
I could tell he wanted to talk—I didn’t—
but there was no one around so I did.
If I was annoyed at his appearance
his talk was far, far worse.
He said, ‘hey there—you! I’m a prophet
of what’s really going on—the Truth—’
Like an idiot, like Pilate, I couldn’t resist the trap.
(‘What is—’)
‘Let me tell you, darlin’, I’m of noble blood,
poet, freestyler, word-world maker, stud—
heir of the kings of the street. Tupac,
NOTORIUS—anger the fuel; They Not Like Us—
but I blizzard the blackness, exchange it
for my own darkness to rule—face it:
people clamor to hear my Foxy rhymes
telling, spelling B.I.G. felling trees—
power comes from being the undergoddog,
so you see, I’m the savior foretold, me me ME
My garbage reigns—drowns out all
the other news—I explain, I defame, and my name is—’
He said his name, and it was so corny,
obvious, and unearned I thought I’d die
of shame and repulsion and an icky sense
that I was responsible for this creation.
‘That’s me, baby, my name is Sir Real
and I write every wrong.
This is not your grandfather’s melting clock,
no apple-faced son of man in a gallery
I’m painting out in the open—all you
who pass by, is it nothing? Can’t get away, Look!’
He reached down into his pants and pulled out
a cinnamon-scented air freshener tree
—the exact smell of a Peter Pan
bus bathroom—and wielded it as though—
I ran at that point, into the waves
to get around him, salt water soaking my feet.
Where you running little girl what’s your name Oh
Say can you see with your head like that?
I did not look back, his awful triumphant
laugh did evaporate with distance
thank God for cries of gulls,
wind in dune grasses, sounding of the sea.