Song for Buck or Zeke, Somewhere in
California
For
Steven Storrie
There's always some misguided
blue-collar type in the A-Team,
sitting in the back of a pick-up
truck, baseball hat, sleeveless body-warmer,
Neil Young shirt and that tobacco
chewer's growl -
always along for the ride. It's
always those few easy dollars, because the local mill shut down
and guess what - he's gonna cause a
shitstorm tonight at the community-hall
for underprivileged kids - run by
some young naive Guatemalan padre.
Applying a mix of Marxist theory and
Bukowski aesthetics,
I would advise this week's model, Buck,
Zeke, or whatever his
poor despairing church-going parents
called him, to rise-up against his
Charles Napier/Bill McKinney/Dennis
Fimple-cast boss -
rise-up brother, join the masses down at the local
pool hall/bar
where you sip beer from a bottle,
watch the ball-game live from exotic L.A.,
and harmlessly pat the asses of 19
year old bar-girls in Daisy Duke shorts and white patent pumps.
Just think, before you sit on the
back of that pick-up truck,
because, like Miss Carmichael back in
first-grade when she wrote you off,
I truly believe the odds are against
you; just like B.A. Baracus
and the cornflake box full of milk
4am insomniacs do now right now;
you poor misguided fuck. It's a
gosh-darn shame really -
as that adult-education and
empowerment course had been going so well for you.
West Texas Bar -- Georgia Red Mud
Steven Storrie is the author of poems like “Charles Bukowski’s Broken Knuckle”
ReplyDeleteOn the toilet bowl
In the library
There is a shit stain
From the last old man
To sit here
And a glory hole
Through which
A wrinkled cock
With a swollen
Purple
Head
Pokes through
Begging to be pleased
I leap up in disgust
And leave in a stream of foul obscenities
A letter awaits me when I get home
From a former employer
Claiming I owe them 11 grand
In overpaid salaries
Them getting that money
Or me using the library facilities again
It’s impossible to say
Which will happen first.
Bukowski was a prolific writer (thousands of poems, hundreds or short stories, 6 novels) who addressed the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, gambling on horse races, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work, including semiautobiographical accounts of his stylized alter-ego Henry Chinaski. In 1986 “Time” called him the "laureate of American lowlife,” and in 2005 in “The New Yorker” Adam Kirsch addressed "the secret of Bukowski's appeal,” claiming “he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero.” He was able to capture a moment in a few, well chosen words, as in “Bluebird”:
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
“The A-Team” was a popular TV series from 1983 to 1987 created by Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo. The Operational Detachments Alpha of the US Special Forces (“Green Berets”) were active in the American-Vietnamese War, and the characters on the TV show were former members of such a unitwho were court-martialed for a crime they didn't commit" before escaping from military prison to work as soldiers of fortune. One of the main characters was Sgt Bosco “B. A. (Bad Attitude) Baracus, played by Mr. T. The show was later adapted into a movie in 2010 produced by Cannell, Ridley Scott, and Tony Scott.
ReplyDeleteNeil Young was one of the most long-lasting rock star survivors of the 1960s. He first gained widespread attention as a member of Buffalo Springfield, then began a solo career and sometimes part of another popular group with David Crosby (a founder of the Byrds), Steven stills (his former bandmate in Buffalo Springfield), and Graham Nash (of the British rock group the Hollies) .
Charles Napier was a prolific character actor in movies, TV series (including two episodes of “The A-Team” as Col. Briggs), usually playing an authority figure like a policeman or soldier. Bill McKinney was another character actor, often playing a villain, particularly in Clint Eastwood’s films. Dennis Fimple, also a character actor, was best known for his seven appearances as Kyle Murty on the TV western “Alias Smith and Jones.”
Daisy Duke was the female lead in another popular American TV series, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which ran from 1979 to 1985, a reworking of the 1975 movie “Moonrunners.” The film and series were the brainchildren of Gy Waldron. A Hanna-Barbera animated series, “The Dukes,” ran for 20 episodes in 1983. The character later appeared in two made-for-television movies “The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion!” (1997) and “The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood” (2000), as well as a direct-to-video film, “The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning” (2007). A spin-off series “Enos” (1980-1981) usually began and with the lead character writing a letter to her as a framing device for his latest adventure. She usually wore extremely short denim cutoff-shorts that became popularly known as “Daisy Dukes.”