I wrote this one for Jems.
It's called "The Map Room."
Many characters wander through this poem.
One you might not recognize is actress Maria Felix
who's basically the Mexican Marilyn Monroe.
Kind of a remarkable actress.
You can track down the movies.
"We moved into a house with six rooms--
the Bedroom, the Map Room, the Vegas Room,
Cities in the Flood Plains, the West, and the Room
Which Contains All of Mexico.
We honeymooned in the Vegas Room where lounge acts
wasted our precious time.
Then there was the junta's high command,
sick dogs of the Map Room, heel-prints
everywhere, pushing model armies into the unfurnished West.
At night, stories of their abandoned homes
in the Cities in the Flood Plains,
how they had loved each other mercilessly in rusting cars,
until the drive-in went under.
From the bedroom we called the decorator
and demanded a figurehead.
The one true diva to be had in all of Mexico--
Maria Felix, star of The Devourer,
star of The Lady General.
Nightly in Vegas, "It's Not Unusual" or the Sex Pistols
medley.
Nothing ever comes back from the West.
It's a one-way door, a one-shot deal, the one room we never
slept in together.
My wife wants to rename it The Ugly Truth.
I love my wife for her wonderful, light, creamy,
highly reflective skin.
If there's an illumination from the submerged cities,
that's her.
She suspects me of certain acts involving Maria Felix.
The gambling debts mount.
But when she sends the junta off to bed,
we rendezvous in the Map Room and sprawl
across the new world with our heads to the West.
I sing her romantic melodies from the Room
Which Contains All of Mexico, tunes
which keep arriving like heaven, in waves of raw data.
Though I wrote none of the songs myself
and can't pronounce them, these are my greatest hits."