From Out the Bushes: Boo!
Voter Registration Metro Bridge
North Grand October '08
It's Halloween again
Beside this Styx;
Don't let on another word Virg
But it looks like we've booked
A perpetual fall.
Clown and Goons,
The figured dead move
To its current beat.
They do the shuffle and breakdown
The sullen hustle and groove...
Ain't no one to give a good-god-damn
Who called this tune.
Upside the street these priests teach
Our future the faint of the cheek.
One step removed it all looks cool
But their trick passes get punched too:
Ain't no free lunch in this old school.
The headmaster barks, "let them revels
Quick start!" Always the actor,
This year I chose the rags
Of a mendicant beggar.
God bless America, it fit the budget.
Even the costumes get cut now
This side of the river.
Our father, always fond of rainbows
And full of the shit
Goes mostly as the leprechaun
Fond of muttering drink and duck,
The old one's call him stooping Lou,
This his pull rug advice:
"Keep the ole' eyes peeled my son;
They're full of mischief everyone. . .
All those ghosts fallin' off
The rolls."
Of course he knew the curse would fit.
Sure and begorrah
There was no two ways over,
I labored on the streets
His bagged man.
So madly patient as was my disposition
With one and only one sleeved option,
I'd wait. . .
Darkly, alone. . .
Catching the pricks kicked asleep,
Dreaming perhaps, like me, or. . .
Maybe, just maybe. . .
Pretending to be.
Cracker Jack Hope and Change
At the Old Ball Game
Right back at us,
We never caught it coming,
That changed up hope;
And you, who possessed
Such grace and timing,
Doesn't it seem like only
A little minute ago?
No.
I'd almost forgotten
It goes way
Way back.
"What a stroke," you said:
Five Yankee seat covered cushions
Presto-puffed into five thousand,
Then placed under the each
And every bottom line of all
The Shylocks stalled
Inside the temple fenced.
"Blessed' be the money changers,"
You said, "For they shall inherit all
The winded shit not. . .
Nailed down."
"Fug um all," they scribbled on the shit house wall;
Maybe there was only one pitch in 'em.
Maybe after the bases loaded
He reached back for his real stuff,
His out of this World Series
REAL HARD STUFF
and it was. . .
Well, yeah
Out' a sight.
Stranded on second, hence the blown wood
This. . .
Exidis, Levitigutted, Numbered and running
Duderotonomy; The transubstantiated
Nose bled witnessing of
The dead-end, wholesale, fire-sale,
Get out' a Dodge sale-
Squeeze played past and post everything,
Opened double-headed Sundays and holidays
Cause that's the way we roll days.
Inside the park, where sparrows get dropped
Like flies, heavy priests cut up
A columned relief;
Their envy perpetual
They plot and wait,
Collaborating with time,
Being full in the knowledge:
Tragedy is easy
Comedy hard.
So another forty get nailed to the principle,
While "Hail Mary". . .
The line holds.
We few, we lucky few
So easily entertained so gloriously
Distracted, purchase yet another season passing,
The sum of us standing singing
Our notional anthem. . .
Next year in Jerusalem.
Tom Simmons was born and raised in North St. Louis, an itinerant actor and union organizer. Tom is currently a member of Pipe fitter's 562 Local, Screen Actor's Guild, and StL Shakespeare Company. Will write for money.
Archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/poetry/42-poetry/250-ts-0710-boo and shortlinked at
http://frsh.in/cy
