Only one person would knock at this late hour.
Hello whispers the one-eyed whistleblower
here are the plans for the invasion of Eurasia.
The peephole goes blank and an envelope
marked Top Secret slides under the door.
The innards of the empire spill out on the floor –
drop zones, lines of attack, precise coordinates,
even a draft condolence speech from the prez
should civilian casualties mount astronomically
following the inevitable retaliatory nuke attack.
With compromised code it’s easy to hack
the mainframe which like a zombie caught
jibbering at daybreak spits out a long list
of thugs and hired assassins, no file complete
without a birth certificate and a close-up photo.
To Julian and Sibel copies go out pronto,
a third to a smooth-shaven childhood friend
in the event of my sudden disappearance.
In the cuspidor beneath the red exit sign
a wisp of smoke rises from a cigarette stub.
For fun I used to idle in a downtown pub
pasting microfilm dots on postage stamps
that glorified royalty. Today we infiltrate
the hub via a swarm of desktops weaving
aleatorically through a web of cheap hotels.
In the city where I lurk few stories are told
about Cassandra, the heroic rampart pacer
whom the locals treated as they would a mute,
she who delivered messages that incinerated
their very medium even as they singed our eyes.
Chained to a swindler’s cart in the guise
of a blind orangutang, with my dented tin cup
jutted out I partake in a stream of commerce,
foreign negatives exchanged for mint money,
all done swiftly and with the mere tip of a hat.
For this I take nothing except all that
which is owed me – the canopy of a tree,
lots of chums to swing with on the vines,
at hand a zither whose tangled strings
loop down from a cumulus of canvas.