Yokels Lured
to Yonker's Asylum
Testosteroned
32 year-old’s court receivership asskicking after my Greater Good
actions
invited a lawsuit -- run off a country road by plaintiff goons --
my own hooligans
assure no
knives/ Glocks packed or bugs/wires on our boardroom’s telltale secure
lines.
My bodyman
makes damn sure I’m not mugged in the civic center can occupied
off-hours by
fire station groupies who rendezvous there with their hook-‘n-ladder
johns’
mullets which are all business in front but all bring-it-on party in back.
After we won and
kept dominion over our clinic and jobs, a friendly local druggist
sent a
picture postcard, “Ain’t seen you in church. When you’re back from Hoboken
(Doc
Williams, don’t you worry, no one else knows about your apartment there),
please pay a
visit to the yokels in the decrepit stinking cabin right
outside town.
Their
neighbors a football field away complain, have been badgering the
sheriff
last coupla
weeks.”... From Big-Sister-In-Charge, “Dad
cheated, wandered,
put
everything back onto me. His barmates knew how to show a girl a good time
but gave me
filthy diseases. Not wanting to be no martyr or pervert, I’ll
lay it
200% on you.
But don’t expect to get paid or nothin’.” Fresh as lead paint,
can’t fake
desperation, she swaddled a baby the size of a half loaf of bread.
Cheeks and
nose smudged with impetigo, the
adolescent hacks hunks of lung.
At this rate
with a $100 of luck, bunch of kids might grow up to become pudding-
faced garbage hustlers or
briefly expensive two-timed whores. I entice the children
out the door, through
the slush and trash, into my Oldsmobile before the alternator
finally
turned over and we went bonkers on
our way toward a safe Jersey haven.
William Carlos Williams -- Lisa Larsen
William Carlos Williams was both a poet and a physician. Beginning with his internship in the "Hell's Kitchen" area of New York City and throughout his 40 years of private practice in Rutherford, New Jersey, his "medical badge," as he called it, permitted him "to follow the poor defeated body into those gulfs and grottos ... , to be present at deaths and births, at the tormented battles between daughter and diabolic mother." From these moments, poetry developed: "it has fluttered before me for a moment, a phrase which I quickly write down on anything at hand, any piece of paper I can grab." Some of his poems were born on prescription blanks, others typed in a few spare minutes between patient visits. His poetry was also influenced by his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was befriended by Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle (the poet H.D.), who used to splash ink onto her clothing to make herself indifferent to the means of writing. Despite the rigors of his dual career, he also maintained the active lifestyle of an adulterer.
ReplyDeleteArrival
And yet one arrives somehow,
finds himself loosening the hooks of
her dress
in a strange bedroom --
feels the autumn
dropping its silk and linen leaves
about her ankles.
The tawdry veined body emerges
twisted upon itself
like a winter wind...!