Urban Legends

They say
every PT Cruiser’s
haunted by the ghost
of a car designer
who didn’t get credit for it
and died alone and drunk,
mangled in the wreckage of a Sebring.

They say
if you stare into the neck
of a bottle of Coke long enough,
you’ll see the spirits of glass makers
driven from their jobs by the advent of plastic
(they’re in the bubbles, silly).

They say if you spin a quarter
and can say the name “Alexander Hamilton”
ten times before it stops and falls,
the federal deficit will right itself.

It’s been said that the wind
off the east end of Long Island
carries the voices of waitstaff
who died longing to be swept off their feet
by Papa Legba or the shade
of Jay Gatsby’s doppelganger.

Electronic drums bear the weight of stars
who died in gas stations,
who failed to make hits, who cried foul
in trashed dressing rooms full of roaches.

They say things about you
and your family too:  how you were
the offspring of fabulous wealth
and were deposited with those cretins
after a coup in your home country.
If you sleep long enough
in the shadow of the flag,
you’ll be lost to your fortune forever

and left with only a vague longing
to read the signs of your squandered past
and discern the truth from little things:
the sneakers on phone lines, the symbols
on a shampoo bottle, the lyrics
of a hideous pop hit. 

They say the world’s a scary place
and every interaction’s got a whiff
of the Hoax of Hoaxes in it. 
They say a lot of things,
and all of them don’t need to be true
to fill you with a lust
for conspiracy.