George Wallace
From TALES OF A YUPPIE DROPOUT
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SAMPLE POEMS |
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From
THE POEMS OF AUGIE PRIME |
From
BUTTERFLIES & OTHER TATTOOS |
From
TALES OF A YUPPIE DROPOUT |
From
THE MILKING JUG |
From
TIE BACK THE ROSES |
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From TALES OF A YUPPIE DROPOUT |
| (Writers
Ink Press 1992) whenever the bank teller gets married i have to make friends all over again it doesn't matter if i liked her or if i am going to like the next one she could have teeth like tombstones and i would still smile at her i have noticed that nobody else bothers with such niceties and they can still get their checks cashed with a minimum of bother whereas i will even talk to the automatic teller if nobody's looking this is one of my biggest faults but it has also made me famous among grocery clerks and waitresses it has even made it possible to pass a bad check or two in one local establishment which shall remain nameless management of course is a different matter all together management doesn't want to hear about it they think it is subversive to break the barriers of position and rank like that they're right it probably is you be the customer and let us be the gatekeepers of free enterprise and orderly business proceedings they say but i just go on sailing deposit slips through the teller's window insulting the interior decorator and generally teasing the moon out of some poor kid's eyes if i was in management's position i would frown on it too but the days pass more pleasantly this way for me anyway and things are tight all over they need me besides the last time i checked they hadn't found a way to create automatic customers yet stupidity takes practice but it is a necessary commodity at fiftyfive miles per hour on the dull highways of america especially after dark when silos sleep standing up with one eye open to the night you can hear the occasional yawn oh and now and again (i've seen it) one of them will swallow a low-flying star which is an interesting phenomenon but in general nothing much else happens anyway i like the stars to keep their distance not only because they refuse to obey the normal rules of mortality but more to the point there's no room on the interstate for us and them at least if making omaha by morning is an issue it's like the state troopers i know they represent good government and protection of the honest citizen from himself but at fiftyfive you could get a degree in cornfields not to mention astronomy uh oh speedtrap better slow down isn't that venus? isn't that orion? and isn't that the president again on the radio? i can still recall the sound of the president's voice something less than a glitter something more than a gleam oh he is clever president full of clever words full of dull american charm he's the guy who said read my lips oh mister president! i can see your face peeking out of every silo i can hear your voice in the hum of the eighteen wheelers sweeping by on the downgrade oh you are a clever president you can understand that i can't do fiftyfive anymore it's three a.m. and this is iowa mister president i cannot do fiftyfive this country is just too big for fiftyfive oh hey mister president read my finger! i know a man who sleeps with a cheese tucked in the crook of his arm he says you wouldn't believe how restful that can be until you've tried it yogurt he says is also supposed to be fine if you can manage to keep from moving too much you can rely on having dry sheets in the morning ever since the bad knees forced him to give up running ever since he learned the limits of beer and his career in management turned sour and there was no more europe on five dollars a day ever since muhammad ali went soft in the head and women went hard in the mouth and sex without a condom became more or less dangerous he sleeps with a cheese limburger camembert gouda brie it apparently makes no difference to him ever since his wife left him for a career in acupressure he sleeps with a cheese he sleeps all morning and he dreams and dreams and the dream is always a peaceful one in fact he dreams he is a small boy living on a dairy farm in connecticut his father grew up there in the days before electricity and they keep the milk in metal cans under the hot summer sun they haul the milk to a cold stream and they leave it there while they eat sandwiches in a field of sweet smelling grasses then one day a storm comes up lightning hits the water and all the milk turns sour and before you know it there is an interstate running straight through the place where the cows used to graze there are alarms bells ringing in the connecticut sky and everybody is running and he wakes up and finds that he really isn't a man who sleeps with a cheese at all he notices in fact that he is sleeping with a woman listen to what the landscape architects say about sod, soil and oriental texturing if you want to but for a garden that will last give me pokeweed, brush and poison ivy god has given us plenty of the common varieties to play with after all and besides he has his own ideas about what groundcover in these parts should look like but look what we have done surrounding nearly every home every cottage quarter acre by quarter acre on at least fifteen thousand acres of this our formerly natural woodland we have recreated some sixty thousand miniatures of the african grasslands and we have named it suburbia now i recognize that the savannah may be man's common homeland that when we came out of the trees to peer over the tall grass in search of running meat it was comforting to have a clump of trees nearby to get a hand up and swing our way out of reach of tiger claws but conditions change other people make the kill for us and at considerably less risk in doing so in fact nowadays there are damn few killer tigers in cattle country and as for us we get our meat from the freezer rack the only hunter you see around here is the neighborhood cat and i can't see having to bulldoze the woods for his sake i would point out that i have the same horticultural tendencies as the next man i just think nature was doing a pretty good job without our interference and besides if you want to hear god's voice in the back yard maybe you have to turn off the lawnmower on a sunday morning and listen to the stirring of new oaks and sugar maples in the wet wet earth
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