drkobra

Hey Donovan in the authentic yourself cap,

Remember Forest Park? Remember that August afternoon?
Remember the digressions of our folkrock hipster friends,
and their "salable cerebral surcelebreality"
as we hopped along the trail smoking cigarettes
and getting sunburnt "and all I got was this lousy tshirt?"
business? Remember scoping smashed slugs, their avocado colored stalks
with black dots retracting into their rotten banana bodies?
What about bananas? I don't know; what's a plantain? Its from South America,
maybe? What's that?

The garbage scows of our ears catch behind us,
some punkass enemy, an old biker on his huffy,
thinks we're smoking weed, "I've got a cellphone!"
like what we're doing is a bearclaw to his momma's throat!

I didn't have my atom weapons on stun so he gets the New Zealand parrot
for his trouble. Assholes need a good clothesline now and then
to keep them humble so they don't end up penning suicide drafts
of a Pulitzer short listed tract on the Reformation.

Remember how we thought he was scared and thanks to us
he'd never stop to help anyone again? But the day is young
and my buzzed head still has a few hours to burn
so we walk the trail and find soft logs to sit down and write.

So far from where I'm used to being the drowned king in a Svankmajer film,
made of clay and insects and there's a woodpecker at five
chessboxing the Franklin Mint trees while sawblade squadrons whirl
my hot, bearded face. Hundreds of gnarled, Davy Jones filaments
hold the tiny machines in their sticky grip,
label each one with a small letter and release them into the wild.

Remember when your armies told me about New York and mine replied,
"Oh, Hell no." Then they spelled dollar signs and I was embarrassed
that the animal kingdom thought I was Ebenezer Scrooge.
"You will be visited by three spirits: Scotch, Whiskey, and Ale."

I think we both had a fill of that back in school
getting two one year-length bones taken out of our body
squeezing through a hole in the ceiling, falling as Christmas Shrapnel
on a place that doesn't get any snow. I remember
when I came to visit and the snowman brought a puff ball pallet
from his wintry cave on the mountain, I said, "Yeah, you guys go,
I had enough already back home."

Remember the tablecloth covered trees, the chilled speech balloons?
The rocks by the lakes with beat up typewriters where I think, there too,
someone told me to put out my cigar?

Respectfully,
Shel Silverstein