PHI IS A MYSTERIOUS NUMBER

I came across this mannequin's face in the AIDS Thrift Store in Center City and the plugged in faces seemed to scream questions from their lips directly to my sense of poetry, hence the creation of art in a controversial way. I feel a poem coming on!

Never mix your women. Charles Jerningham

Phi is a Mysterious Number

Fighting for the front forum
the cracking open has started.
Just throw the fedora to the past
and find a glimpse into the
reflection of the multiple personalities
living inside each individual’s head.
Her heads, inside of heads,
slipping inside of heads, all demanding
a certain measure of face value.

She was wearing veneer glasses
yesterday,
propped onto a undiscerning nose. She was
seeing external faces with an internal tone.
Faces creeping up the catacomb of neural cords
patiently waiting for the front view--
hoarding faces, fighting faces,
sexual kitten, Marilyn Monroe.

Does she crave
the golden ratio of the face
as her Barbie pink vision
melts into June Cleaver, a witch
doctor, a cat fight,
a prostitute of position,
a sot smeared firewoman,
the old maid, Mother Teresa,
Amelia Earhart, Tokyo Rose,
a trophy wife, a calendar pin-up,
a butch, a femme, a lesbian,
a tomboy, lady luck, a virginal
bride with white lace draped
over her face, a genderless soldier
dying in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Choosing her own set of smoky eyes,
based on the dominant life she is living,
the facade of faces tenaciously battle
the many women that inhabit her existence.
Which one will be her mask to rule?
Which one is the average face
of the American woman?