| 1988 poem by the late Jim
Gustafson read by Robert Jones and produced by Jim Pallas. Read the poem at http://www.jpallas.com/proposed/ |
DETROIT
The cops don't
have
magnums of champagne
in the backseats
of their cruisers.
Seven year old kids
know how to steal motorcycles
and where they can
get new serial numbers.
Watch out, keep
down.
My father was the
star of the demolition derby, my mother
sang with Les
Elgart
until her voice gave out.
But that won't get
me a Liberty Bond sandwich,
or a banjo good
enough
to carry to California.
Soak your head in
a bucket of gasoline when it gets too tough.
There isn't a work
clothes store in the whole city
that will sell me
another black t-shirt with a pocket
on credit.
I can't take it.
* * *
Let's steal the
hubcaps
off Cadillacs
and submit them to
the Paris Review-
I'm tired of being
treated like a junkie
with a lisp.
* * *
Save your dead
pigeons,
Monty, sell the pelts off your rats.
Call Bruno's Bump
Shop and say "437 on Tuesday"
and see what
happens.
Walk into the
drugstore,
look real together,
buy the New York
Times and a pack of Winstons,
stare into the
woman
clerk’s eyes
and say “machismo”
See how long you
live.
* * *
He leaves
Detroit
because he's tired of selling his asshole for gumdrops.
In California everyone
has a sports car,
but he isn't even
going to argue anymore.
His mother sang her
lungs out at the UAW picnic,
but it didn't get
her a pork chop a watermelon seed,
or a glass of grape
kool aid.
Write that down on
your scorecard and send it to the pope.
This boy is bitter.
To get the
situation
straight,
a handfull of
Texaco
roadmaps and a head full of seaweed
would be better
than
this.
Blow up a piano in
the memory of Detroit,
and swing open them
gates, Henry Ford, I'm walking through,
and I have a
squirrel
gun and a beaker of acid
that says you can't
stop me.
____________________
by permission
copyright 1975 by Jim Gustafson
from "Bright Eyes Talks Crazy to Rembrandt" (1975),
thirty-five poems by Jim Gustafson,
published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wykoff St.,
Brooklyn,
New York 11217
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