LISTENING TO WAYLON
When you smell the smoke it’s clear
there’s no more time.
Young girls just get lonelier and
every year the peacock
with its tail and buzzing
batteries is dying while
the starfish, by candlelight,
stands idly by.
Barely moving inherits the earth
while the rest of us
pitch fits just to get paid. Big-headed chicks
fall first from the nest
and it seems to go: outlaw, outlaw, whore, whore,
fat whore, town drunk, troubadour.
Now you know how babies get made down
here in Texas.
THE SEVEN DAY WEEK
Sunday
Partly cloudy, chance of thunderstorms
Monday
Chicken Noodle
Yankee Bean
Tuesday
‘s just as bad…
Wednesday
Ladies Drink Free
10-12PM
Thursday
: nothing.
Friday
somehow becomes transparent
Saturday
Night Fever made Travolta
a star.
HERBICIDE
There’s all that herb I smoked in high school and then
there’s my father Herb who sold refrigerators, air conditioners, dish-
washers. Liked football games,
white belts & westerns.
Also valued for his flavor, scent and other qualities. Peaches and Herb were once
America’s Sweethearts of Soul
and although there have been numerous Peaches,
Herb Feemster
has remained a constant. Born in Anacostia, an area of Washington, DC, in
which my father sold TVs
when the maw-maws and jungle-bunnies weren’t stealing them
off the trucks, Herb Feemster
grew up knowing that Love Is Strange and also how to Shake His Groove Thing
which would have annoyed, confused and disgusted my father,
not smudging him, but certainly making the sauce
taste funny.
HYMNS ANCIENT AND MODERN
The elevator doors in the lobby
of the hotel
over by the bus station open. She’s in town
from Caracas
until early tomorrow on her way
to see her brother
in Florida. Puffier than I’d remembered
and much sadder her mother
dead and also one of her friends
and mine. I take her out
for bad shrimp creole at a fake Cajun place on
Ninth Avenue that
I’d heard was good. The food isn’t but the table’s
by the window and the sunset
silhouettes her dyed-black hair. We drink slowly
at first and I pretend
I can see the pictures of undead friends
on the tiny screen
of her camera. She’s 53 and lost trying
not to cry and when
she goes out on the street for a cigarette
she taps on the glass
and waves to me through a bright cloud of
amber.
Mike is also the auteur responsible for the much more cheerful boobsploitation flick "Girlquake", where a bunch of hot chicks come out of the center of the earth to look for their leader who apparently resides in Coney Island. Hey, did you know Jimmy Rodgers spent his last day on earth at Coney Island? Mike also does some great paintings, very cheerful and not at all like the stuff published above. You can check them out here:
http://michaelrandallnyc.com/home.html
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