Joe Dolce: ‘Clearly Not Fourth Street’

Clearly Not Fourth Street

With your fish hook mouth in the bottom-feeder times,
and your eyes like marbles and your skin like rind,
and your silver scales and your sermon that whines,
Oh, who among the fishermen could fry you?

With your pockets full of correct tokens at last,
but the streetcar departing that you missed when it passed,
and your lizard-like run for it, and your pencil moustache,
who among your black girlfriends wouldn’t untie you?

With your trail mix nuts and your pumpkin seeds,
and the tarot cards you never learned to read,
and your op shop hats and gold jumper leads,
you need a 12-volt battery to jump-start you.

With your silo eyes where the wheat is loaded,
and your tractor head with the gears eroded,
and your ga-ga writing with the words encoded,
you say you never read poetry ’cause it’s too hard to.

The Queen of Typhus in her hospital cot,
is third in line for her penicillin shot,
and the big toe on your left foot is starting to rot,
while you wonder which nurse will take you out,

and the mounting flames in your pyjama attire,
from your cigarette ash that started a fire,
but you were so stoned on coke to enquire,
the name of the fireman who put you out.

Oh, the poets and geriatrics all met on the cliff,
to determine if you were dead or limp or just stiff,
and why did you steal that Muddy Waters riff,
that you’d think we’re so deaf, it’s bewildering.

Well, I wish you’d never left Maggie’s Farm,
but I’ll walk you back there if you just take my arm,
but first autograph this rabbit-foot charm,
and a photo to give to my children.

Now you hold that honorary PhD,
you try to be humble, but you know you’re still mean,
you crank out those albums just like a machine,
as long as your agent gets bookin’s.

With your baby-faced lips and your curly hair, too,
and your tight peg-legged jeans and your spit-polished boot,
you KNOW what Allen Ginsberg really wanted to do,
every time you bent over, he was lookin’.

Joe Dolce