Tramp, and: Swallowing the Whistle, and: Valentino’s Last Word

Because everyone’s deaf in a silent film

and can’t speak unless spoken to

and only then through text

that stitches one plot to the next

and pitches the heroine’s fate to the villain’s whim,

the scrim of the screen hides even this, initially:

she’s blind, too— soubrette who falls

for the push-broom and the man

who wears its sober sobriquet.

Which came first: the dancehall girls

doing the 23 skidoo, or the mayor’s voice

chastising them from the tail-end

of a kazoo? Tramp or trammeled dictator,

beggar, thief, vagrant, whore: woman

who couldn’t make up her mind anymore

if she wanted to be a wife or that part of a spade

against which you rest your foot

to force it into the ground.

To stamp, to tamp, to tread, to trample,

to push, to shove, to bruise, to press down—

from here on out, everything will be loud.

The great beauty in listening to nothing

is imagining what nitrate’s made obsolete:

the meaning of a word, its unscripted deceit.

Swallowing the Whistle

Pursed lips are perjury, adding injury to insult.

When you say you love me, do you mean right now,

or for all eternity? Like Chaplin who swallowed

the whistle, I blow you a kiss, hollow hiss

in the ear of history. It’s not magic

we’re marked by, but the ax Eve used

to chop down the tree, so the snake had to crawl

on his belly, as God intended. Quia delectasti me, Domine,

in factura tua, she said as she swung it—Oh Lord,

glad by thy workThou hast made me—

my bare hands, that dead language,

come alive.

Valentino’s Last Word

Who could have predicted   the death of Valentino would spark a rash of suicides     among suburban housewives?

A woman in Wyoming, who,   just the night before, happily combed her daughter’s hair,     could go on no longer; another,

whose husband never loved her   like the Sheik of Araby, did he? Outside the Polyclinic Hospital,     the poison swallower’s call for help

was answered by Lucille Vanderbilt,   Switchboard Operator, with the curt reply, “He’s dead.”     More or less, it was the end

of an era, the end even   of the elevator boy at the Ritz, tired of standing all day     alongside the grief of the rich,

who dropped himself over-   dramatically into the quay. A world away, Fascists     stood guard over the bier

in black-shirt, placed there   by his producer. One hundred thousand mourners chased his casket through the streets,     though it bore only a wax effigy

of a man with a farming degree.   On and on into the next century, The Chazz Cats at the Albion     sang his song: at night

when you’re asleep   (with no pants on)into your tent I’m gonna creep    (with no turban on).

Appendicitis or overdose   of Rogaine, trying to regain his hairline after the fact of it:     dust to dust, death came as it must—

no stranger than silence,   moving air pulled through the trees so quietly, it doesn’t shake a single leaf,     but takes the last words from the lips

of a dead man’s mouth: Don’t worry,   Chief. Blasé or bored, greeting or warning or explanation,     most words aren’t necessary

for communication, though   it often helps to see punctuation, which expresses disbelief or delight,     any emotion (like fright)

that compels a face to react.   Never again will we see the world     so white and blackly lit

that color didn’t enter into it,   that speech was such an afterthought, it could be left behind     like a note scrawled on a napkin.