DEVIL
THE DEVIL’S JUST A DAY AWAY
We hail from the Ward just a stones throw away from
where we spent Saturday May 21st His 96th birthday
Cemetery bound when his bride began to hack like a Hoover
(yes! she has a sense of humour)
The Ward: a melting pot of jewish-italian-irish huddled
masses The Psych Ward a place where Buddy Bolden
perfected his coronetsmanship +a few aunties nestled
beneath couches in the lounge Ward Cleaver decidedly
NOT a member of our family
Emergency Ward Mt. Sinai: No milk + honey in sight
Inner city megalith with a 7 foot bleeding madman perilously
close to bludgeoning our coughing mother Another inmate
snarling 4 letter epithets even after being given a cheese sandwich
( and a pen with which he proceeded to gouge out his eyes)
No flies on Mt. Sinai Oedipus My exasperated brother now
almost deaf said: Zen? Zen? What in the hell does that guy know
about Zen? NO! not Zen a PEN! This day went on until hell
froze over +Mr. Dybuuk needed to escape from the Jews he was
trifling with
Especially the mother Coughing like the now endangered Whooping
Crane I’m NEVER coming back here again! The tea is like pishuchtz
she remonstrated I prayed for a Zen-mind in which to hide +used arcane
hand signals to induce a trance Behind dead eyes my soul had joined father
graveside where the dead have their own business to do as do the living
So what is the business of this dead father? No longer bound to white tee
shirted angina seething in suburban fugue state Cigarette gleaming long
into dark nights of the soul Ditto dial of his watch Glowing green numbers
tick-tock tick-tock like the croc who ate a clock now following Captain Hook
for his other hand Our father’s ticker counting down the years to infarction
____
what’s a hospital? a hospital is just a bunch of
disconnected buttons, dying people and very sophisticated and
comfortable orderlies. but the whole world is like this:
nobody knows what they are supposed to know –
poets can’t write poetry
whole nations led without leaders, why the whole thing is like
trying to copulate with a wooden
dick… oh pardon me!
(Charles Bukowski: The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses 1969)
SPRING 2017
songanddancegirl 