3850. INTENT TO DERIDE

INTENT TO DERIDE

(a trip through old time)

This ride will never stop. That was the wrong

dollar you put in. Poor fellow, so faithful, so

glum. Outside any bounds of reason, I would

have to say that you've outdone yourself this

time. Putting pudding in the cup; over-cooking

the recipe batch. Watching the flies descend

upon the shoo-fly pie on the window-sill's end.

-

I came back from home ready for a fight. I was

fight-weight ready, I'd bested the previous nine

men in a somewhat illustrious career. One broken

chin later. And I looked around : where were you?

-

Nowhere to be found. And I mean nowhere. I'd

looked under every grass-skirt I could find, I'd probed

with my tongue every set of open lips offered to me,

I'd ridden shotgun on every fondled branch and bush

that came my way. No sense in pretending. I was

a Zorro to anyone else's swash 'Z'. The real thing, me.

-

Now I would struggle my way to fight the truth,

push back at the manager, slam dunk the fire-chief,

split the skull of the principal. Before it gets dark,

I'll be at your place, ready to light the new campfire.

-

Nothing ever made me cry like Civil War songs and

men who wouldn't die. You know the ones, twisted and

grimaced with sorrow and pain, lying on the bloodied

field howling for hours before they expired - and only

after hours or days of that. How could a man sustain

himself through of all that hurt and pain? What good

was this shit-pan of war then, anyway?

-

I was Lance Corporal Eidermeyer, I was Joe Trane.

I was the emancipated slave-guy, Barboe, I was

Sergeant O'Baine. We all came down from New York.

We all caught the damned death-train : Chickamauga,

Spotsylvania, Wilderness and Gettysburg. I don't care.

I don't know; and it is now this modern age. I am here

again, kissing your daughters, waltzing your dames.

The new, entire world is my daisy chain. This ride

will never stop. No. This ride will never stop.