"Machine guns rattle toy-like from a hill,
Down in a row the brave tin soldiers fall:
A sight to be recalled in elder days
To yet more boastful visions of despair."
—Robert Graves, "Recalling War"
Shake, rattle, and roll
through the 12 Steps
Oprah's gonna slubber
me with air kisses.
If you don't like my peaches
don't you shake my tree
the country is shutting down
sexually.
Bulletin just in:
-"a chunk of marble fell off the
dentil molding on the
facade of the Supreme
Court, but the basketball-
size piece missed the
justices, killing
instead one Freddie Gillenwater,
a one time
back-up singer for the Four Tops."
Women are always getting
screwed anyway.
they're taught not to
like sex, drugs, and
rock 'n' roll.
So, why not have naked
old justices
tell them what they
can do with their bodies.
And the armies of the night
keep marching
to the right.
they call me mellow yellow.
amen.
I measure everything
either "BHA" or "AHA".
Before my heart attack
or after my heart attack.
Before i was invincible,
Could eat the leather offa
hobo's shoes,
sleep with the swamis on
a bed of nails,
or do debutantes til
coitus interruptus.
AHA, alas,
now it's reruns of Lawrence Welk,
asleep by 9PM on beds of lettuce,
and prayer to a long-denied
Higher Power to keep me from
the Cooler just one more day.
Oh, yeah, then why don't debutantes
engage in group sex?
Because they don't want to write all those
thank you notes in the morning.
Ron Spurga grew up during the anti-war movement of the 1960's and worked as a community organizer on Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. He subsequently founded L.E.S.C.I.A., a political satire theatre company which produced his latest play about the aftermath of 9/11, "Alphabet City." His poems have been published in France and in the Netherlands.