Pages

Sunday, November 27, 2011

IN MEMORIAM

















Everything starts here
in my composition book
just like the ones I never used
for school work
too busy scribbling my subversive poetry
in study hall
a nasty little parody of Beowulf
or The Night Before Christmas
a drunken Santa staggering around
busting up the furniture
always thought drunks were funny
still do
art imitating life
I guess
I was past the days when dad
barely able to stand
took the car out one New Years Eve
and wrecked it
injuring some innocent family members
in the other vehicle
then
somehow getting a ride back home
and taking our other car out
and wrecking it on the same night

the guy was a gas

one day I said this is such B.S.
this idea of school as a full time job
and I vowed to stop taking homework
completely
and made good on it
my last two years of high school
nobody cared
the funniest thing was
they let me graduate
dear old mom and her Second Big Mistake
would be at the beer joints all night
I'd stay up alone on Saturdays
in that isolated farmhouse
watching Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi on late night TV
I wanted to walk like an Egyptian
I could always count on them
to come home fighting
ripping the phone out of the wall
and busting up some furniture
so comical
I'd pass my nasty rhymes around in class
Teach would be up there with his blah blah
my poem circulating up and down
each row of desks
even the girls snickering
and passing it on
and Teach
protector of impressionable minds
intercepting the paper
beginning to read
beginning to laugh out loud
catching himself
face turning red
going on a diatribe about how such trash
was the product of a sick mind
but it was too late
I'd already caught him
in the act
and gool ol' Mom lying there
in a pile of chicken feathers
from a ripped up pillow
and ol' Doc from town would come out
and patch her up
discreetly
it was a small town
and Doc's young daughter
prettiest girl in my Junior High class
asked me out one time
to a roller skating party
it occurred to me much later
that he must have put the kabosh
on that from ever happening again
with the likes of me
and Santa cursed
and flipped them all the finger
as he rode out of sight
after busting up some furniture
of course
always thought drunks were funny
still do
but only funny
if they're funny
and not morose
more points if he's staggering around
with a lampshade on his head
every comic knows
that comedy comes from pain
so please don't stand there
with that look of disdain
and try to change me now

Sunday, November 13, 2011

CHRISTOPHER STARDUST













You gambled on a sure thing and your losses were incalculable. So you hit the road (after being tossed from a speeding pickup truck).

While hitch hiking, you meet up with an old southern gentleman who is offended by the stars in your eyes and the stripes along the highway. He says, "I SPIT on you, suh!"

"No ya don't," you cry, keeping on the move, bobbing and weaving, increasing the tempo until he runs out of saliva.

You shag a ride with a woman in a Jaguar convertible. She parks along a dirt road and her top comes down. You desperately want to get her home to play a game of Scruples, knowing that she has none.

You say you can never be bought, but she purchases you outright. And though there was a price on your head, she says it can be easily removed with a little soap and water.

Her career is in high gear, so she leaves you at home to play Mister Mom. She sends you a text that says: BANG THE DRUM. BURP THE BRAT. BE SURE THE DOGS ARE BATHED AND PROPERLY TUCKED INTO BED. (It is public knowledge that she has a rash in a private place, but since it's always dark when she gets home, you're the last one to know.)

You become a transvestite, fashioning your own dresses from the burlap bags you buy with your meager allowance. You wear glitter in your hair and call yourself Christopher Stardust.

The newspaper does a human interest story on you. You get your own cable TV show, doing psychic readings for house pets from the way they bark, mew, or snort into the telephone. You tell a cat that its last escape from death was just by a whisker.

You parley your knowledge of animals and your smooth bedside manner into a successful phone sex business for those who are into bestiality. (You imitate all those beastly noises yourself.)

You take all your profits and hit the casino again, intent upon making that one big score.

You put it all on black.

It comes up red.

You borrow money from a guy named Bruno. You don't lose your shirt...you lose your bra, your wig, and your garter belt. They take you back to the highway where they toss you from an even faster moving truck.

Ever the hardheaded one, you gather yourself up and stagger down the road. Glitter falls from your hair and gets stuck in your navel. You look up at the sky and see a shooting star burning itself out. Your woman drives by in her Ford Fiesta.

This time, she doesn't stop.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

STARS ON WATER


Friday Poetry Fest












We are lost in the darkness
the autumn constellations
like the sparkle of snow

Dreaming
drifting
as milk wagons from a bygone era
on nightbound roads
moving ceaselessly in search
of a vanished dawn

The sleeping forest
crisp and cold
a jewel in the moonlight

Night planes
spiraling stars
deer snorting in the underbrush

Atum spills his seed across the firmament
the great nebula of Andromeda
we need only believe in mysteries

Our campfire
like the summer
fades to glowing embers

Eternity so relentless
and yet so fleeting
springs and autumns flash by
slipping wordlessly away

And we
like stars on water
drifting seaward
In the awe-filled silence