Hick Poetry Classic: 'Two Fours'

1.
each step rattles with bottle caps
bent into quarter moons
or half smiles
of gold teeth
cameroon currency
in burlap bags
hemp tied about my canvas drawers
it’ll be a helluva night
tonight
i tell you what
these caps here
these caps’ll buy me
two beers and
and
a pickled egg.
you’ll see.

2.
a thousand souls are drifting
from manholes
in front of that ramshackle
chinese laundry
i told you about
y’see some people
dont like them orientals y’know
but i like em fine
that’s what them japs like to be called
right?
and them souls
well they’re getting caught
in the bony fingers
of them dead trees
them barren trees
scratching the back of an indifferent sky
i heard that
the best thing a soul could become
is a cloud.
i heard that once
i think my gramma told me.

3.
i heard that when god spoke
I heard
It was like…………
BLAM!
the earth come together
like that!
jus like that!
like a sperm
N
an egg
and that
ever time
he speaks
god that is
ever time he speaks
another world is created
spinning out in space
dancing a black waltz
tangled in his beard
i heard this from a scientist once
i think

4.
y'know, sometimes
i crack an egg in my beer
and i watch it float down
like a sunset
in a sky full of smoke
and i think
i sure wish
my mama
would stop saying
i just wish
she’d stop telling me
that
i was a product
of rape.

4.
hey look
they’re lightin them lanterns
and meltin them candles down
in the little town
of Needles tonight
turnin it into a freckle
of stars
stamped across the dirt
smack in the middle
of this bare-assed land
y’know
that the babble says
excuse me
the holy babble says
that it's better to live
in a bare-assed land
than with
a thousand
quarrelsome whores
not in those words though
me
i’d have to try it out first
before i bet on it.


5.
i been dictating
to this bottle
of turpentine
gin
with sugar
on the rim
all damn night
but its hard to drown
out
mexicali trumpets
when they’re so damn
loud
cant even hear myself talk
don’t worry a man tells me
don’t worry he says
yaint missin much

6.
it’s nights like these
that my shadows
come in threes.