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Little Legend
One night,
no one around,
nothing to do.
Bam-Bam and the Electrician
joined forces and funds
for a nickel bag they smoked up
It musta been summer,
smoke racing from the pipe,
seeds popping,
hot red red streaks across a still-lit sky;
stars showing through.
They didn't normally hang-out.
"You know Wizard?"
"Yeah, he sucks."
"You know Hose?"
"He's awright."
Chokin' back tokes as they talked,
words encased
in cartoon balloons of smoke
that
Exploded
When-
Ever
They
Had
To
Breathe.........
Maybe Bam-Bam
was still wearing his vanilla-white
Good Humor suit.
Stoned,
Smiling his Good Humor smile,
while the Electrician,
wired up and rarin,
tossed Nietche neatly over Bam's head,
until meeting on some common ground
like Baseball.
And maybe Bam-Bam
still had his vanilla-white truck
and they went joyriding,
ringing the bells, watching the freezers
Steam into the night.
And maybe,
there was something in that wind,
whipping between them,
some Zodiacal sign,
errant curse...
some damn thing
that doomed them both,
years later
and years apart,
to ride the shot-gun seat
of best friend's car
to oblivion.
The Rich
They glimmered like soft light in a photograph.
He with his face scrubbed red, tiny hair in place, red tie, gray
suit, knife-edge crease over shined black shoe look of success.
She, the tall wasp small nose pointed upwardly mobile mannish blue
all business look over legs like sculpture.
Each wreathed in a halo of cologne
filling the air with two kinds of headache
as the glided past the drabness that was reality.
Wunk, leaning against the stoop, heaved up a lunger, and flicked
his cigarette so the burning missle traced its orange line
after-image just inches from their pert rear-ends, before turning
to point a finger painted with the stains of the spilled guts of
an 82 Pinto, at Pool Man,
"The rich is all dopes."
Pool Man squinted up at Wunk, his front teeth goal posts in a
losing game, the skin at the corners of his filmy eyes rippled
like a dirty pond.
"See, steada doin somthin sensbul wid der doe like
Sittin around drinkin,
or sleepin
or cruisin on a yacht,
or maybe climbin Mountains in Teebet,
or drivin around in a jacked up 56 Chevy blastin Buddy Holly out
the windows all day yellin "Hey baby, like yer style," at hot
lookin broads,
or shootin pool,
or swimming,
or decidin, while sittin around drinkin one night, "Hey, I think
I'd like ta be drinkin in New Orleans, or Paris, or L fuckin A,"
an just hop on a goddamn plane an do it,
or buyin up all the Rocky and Bullwinkle videos they can find...
or cripes doin just about any shittin thing but
go ta woik everyday dressed like fags
ta make more money
dat dey don't know how ta use anyway."
Wunk heaved another clam, popped a pyramid of butts up in his
cigarette pack and shook his head settling back to the business
of keeping tabs on the world.
Joseph Ferguson
Email: Joseph Ferguson
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