Big
Gil's Clientele
The
smoke's thick,
burns my eyes,
the beer's hot and high.
I don't see no girls.
My blue jeans is tight,
hurts my gut,
music's too loud,
popcorn's cold.
Too dark to see
them girls even if'n
they come back,
but did you see
them knockers
and them tight pants
Sure like to have me some of that.
Whooey, give me
another beer.
Eden and Lebanon
By
cracky,
it just dawned on me
the sun sets
in the mideast too.
After
the Spit
My
lips swelled, my shirt's torn,
my forehead has knots,
my nose's been bleeding,
hardly a fight,
held me down
and whupped the snot out of me.
Big dumb lardass,
rubbed my nose in the sand
and those other bastards,
standing around,
"Spit over my hand."
I'll spit over their hand,
right in their damn face.
Didn't want to, but he's at me,
all the time gouging,
elbowing, pulling hair,
stepping on my toe,
big lardass,
Oh, well, hell.
Intent
With
my old racquet
I would crack it, smack it
crash it, smash it.
With my strings,
I'd zing it.
When I would,
I'd wood it.
Rich
Man to Lazarus
Strapped
for cash
he was
he said
his hands across his waist
his fingers interlaced.
Unabeiged
A starving
eye
will eat redily
purplously
yellously
azuredly
redundantly.
To the
Numbers
We dance
daily,
not gaily
but jumping about
with a hurly burly here
and scurry there,
in and out,
one, two, three,
left, right, left.
Yes, we dance;
to the caller's demands
we move,
in step, according to plan,
just so and so just,
we move
Till, at last, the music stops,
and we stand sweating,
disengaged,
feeling our aching everything,
and wonder, "Will it begin again,
or was that last number
Good night, Irene?"
Deed and Double
I'm confident
sure
her head to touch
her subtle scent
yeah, no doubt!
It's fundamental
dependable.
There's her intricate lace
delicate knots
undoubtedly
proof of us
here bound
in heat and night
and certainty—
poof.
Stuff
The intricate
web
binding stuff
to the consequential
is tissue thin
easy to rip
when need or wish
steps bigfootedly in.
Stuff falls out,
lies neglected
like a tow sack of meowling kittens
along a country road.
But stuff lovers notice
though slow to come
when they come
they come rousingly carrousingly
dragging the reluctant along
pell mell
helter skelter.
They grab stuff up
hold it
like a kitten
by the ruff
aloft
and glory in it—
that wonderfully superfluous stuff.
The Stork
Africa is
where
storks fly to,
and Europe.
They mate, too,
some think
awkwardly.
But endangered is
not what storks are.
Identity
How slowly
we earn
our names,
gain the
turns curls
work for swirls
dot our Is.
The Sound of Fury
Tick,
tock
Tick, tock
It's the Quentin Compson rock.
Tick, tock
Tick, tock.
Don Yarborough; or, Who am I to Judge?
That what-was
is not
the what-was
we thought he was,
the one
we forgot
he wasn't.
Was he?
Whining
To whine
in the wine
is no crime
if at the same time
you rhyme.
Dune
Doings
Behind the
dunes, there are mosquitos.
I've wondered what mosquitos are doing
when they're not doing to me what they're
doing to me.
Dance
me loose
today
this way
the sway is play
hey,hey!
Commonly
It is
precisely because
we do
redo
redo again
that we lose our again
in our did
and some our
do
too
till utterly
undone.