IN MEMORIAM

Poetry Picnic

d'Verse Poets Pub

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