Into poetry? Me too. Nobody likes a good poem more than the Hammer household.
There once was an artist named Saint
Who swallowed some samples of paint
All shades of the spectrum
Flow out of his rectum
What a colorful lack of restraint!
Well, it seems there's much hubbub in the Old North State about our Republican Governor's choice of "Poet Laureate". What's that you say? What's a "poet laureate" and why do we need one? You must be kidding you uneducated p.o.s. redneck, of course we need a state poet and I'll tell you why...MORON! We need a Grand Master Poet Czar for the very same reason we need a state flower or state color or state bird...because everybody else has one and Goddamnit we ain't getting left behind!
There once was a fellow McSweeny
Who spilled some gin on his weenie
Just to be couth
He added Vermouth
Then slipped his girlfriend a martini!
Anyway Gov. McCrory (a stupid ass Republican!) went out and appointed some self-published "poet" (I use the term loosely) by the name of Valerie Macon, and guess what? Our REAL poets ain't having none! Just who the hell ever heard of Valarie Macon anyway? She's obviously a tool of the right, why else would she be appointed? I'm sure she thinks she's Emily Dickinson (the stupid bitch) but we ain't impressed...besides she's not in "The Club". As you well know our past Mac Daddy poets have been household names. Who can forget Kathryn Stripling Byer or Cathy Smith Bowers (all women of importance have THREE names, preferably hyphenated). I don't know about you but when I think highbrow I 'm not thinking Tennyson, Dryden or Pope, I'm thinking Bowers! And to prove my point here's just a sample of the genius of Cathy (winner of the coveted Texas Tech Poetry Award).
I had a boyfriend once, after my mother
and brothers and sisters and I
fled my father’s house, who worked
at the Piggly Wiggly where he stocked
shelves on Fridays until midnight
then drove to my house to sneak me out,
take me down to the tracks by the cotton mill
where he lifted me and the quilt I’d brought
into an empty boxcar. All night
the wild thunder of looms. The roar of trains
passing on adjacent tracks hauling
their difficult cargo, cotton bales
or rolls of muslin on their way
to the bleachery to be whitened, patterned
into stripes and checks, into still-life gardens
of wisteria and rose. And when the whistle
signaled third shift free, he would lift me
down again onto the gravel and take me home.
If my mother ever knew she didn’t say, so glad
in her new freedom, so grateful for the bags
of damaged goods stolen from the stockroom
and left on our kitchen table. Slashed
bags of rice and beans he had bandaged
with masking tape, the labelless cans,
the cereals and detergents in varying
stages of destruction. Plenty
to get us through the week, and even some plums
and cherries, tender and delicious,
still whole inside the mutilated cans
and floating in their own sweet juice.
BRILLIANT!
You need a pretentious female poet of color who insists that all refer to her as "doctor' although she never even achieved a B.A.
ReplyDeleteFor Hammer in NC from Rhett in WV; a Haiku (and s'more):
ReplyDeleteDamn, in that tube-top
You make me almost forget
That you're my cousin.
Naked in repose,
Silvery silhouette girls
Adorn my mudflaps.
A painful sadness.
Can't fit big screen TV through
Double-wide's front door.
In WalMart toy aisle,
Wailing boy wants wrestling doll.
Mama whups his ass.
Distant siren screams.
Idiot Verne's been playing with
Gasoline again.
Flashlights pierce darkness.
No nightcrawlers to be found.
Guess we'll gig some frogs.
I curse the rainbow
Emblazoned upon his hood.
I hate Jeff Gordon.
Tonight we hunger.
Grandma sent grocery money
To Jimmy Swaggart.
Set the VCR:
Dukes of Hazzard Marathon
At 9 O'Clock.
Sixty-five dollars
And cyclone fence keeps me from
My El Camino.
We were returning from Topsail, or as CW calls it "the Outer Banks" (Lord give me strength) and I missed this wonderful example of "street poetry".
ReplyDeleteThis poem mines the caches of the Redneck experience and beautifully captures, with its symbolism and mellifluous design an authentic trailerpark ambience which I find simply breathtaking! It is a phonaesthetical masterpiece worthy of a reading in a Greenwich Village coffeehouse full of transvestites on MDMA.
Thank you so much Mudge for sharing!