Carrie Nation (or How I Became An Interesting Girl)

 I don't like it either, sometimes,

but there it is, like a cop 

parked behind a billboard

or

a funnel blowing the barn apart.

Now here's this guy,

He needs a drink before he spits it out,

termites working in every smile,

his suit already pooling in the chair.

And now I'm the one, the home town

you can never go back to.

"You've changed," is usually spoken with that face one saves

for finding out your sports hero shoots skag

or the sweet old lady next door has renters under the floor.

Rivers flow,

rats run up the pole.

Clocks tick,

clouds form and blow.

Carrie Nation knew it was true,

as Lizzie B. did, too,

that the most interesting person in the room

is always the one swinging the axe.

_______

for Sunday Muse #185.

Mixed Marriage

"We are not like other families,"

remarked my father

impaled sideways through his head by a stick,

feet dancing in thin air.

My mother wore black crepe

though her husband lived yet, suspended,

and I, the fruit of her womb, refused her invitation

to stay still beneath her fingers at the bottom of the bath.

We had a dog with a nervous condition

and a ghost in the basement by the water softener.

My father covered the story and his un-impaled eye,

seeing old sweethearts in his dreams.

Mother tried to move me into the basement incinerator,

but was prevented by the ghost. 

Daddy liked swing music and Dixieland jazz,

insisting the stick was a clarinet and the dog Benny Goodman,

And though not observant, he did walk on Saturdays.

__________

for Sunday Muse #134, where I am hosting.

Big Bucks

The woods being full of hunters,
some deer escape to a televised quiz show.
Who wrote the swing classic "Sing, Sing, Sing"?
The deer do not know.
(It was Louis Prima.)

The deer prefer Glenn Miller, 
though they cannot afford to ride the Chattanooga Choo Choo
unless they win big in the next round.

Who composed "The Song of the Volga Boatmen"?
The deer look at each other.
One of them dips his antlered head and buzzes in.
"Unknown," says the deer. "It's a traditional Russian piece,
popularized in the U.S. by Glenn Miller."
Correct! Bonus round!
In what year did his version hit #1 on the charts?
"1941," responds the deer. Too easy.

Later on, a herd of deer board a train.
They read a magazine and then they're in Baltimore.
The bucks clatter their racks on the Phoenix Shot Tower.
One doe asks another, who wrote "In The Mood"?
Joe Garland and Andy Razlaf,
but she is not smirking for knowing the answer.
______

for Sunday Muse #81.