POEM

                                 for L.M.


Could it be that I was living
in your song? Could it be that I
was at The Pink Flamingo?

The foul-person crowd
was stylish-looking
but I heard backstreet sobbing.

Faces were beet-red
& pesky-necked hand-clappers
banging to the blare.

Was this a Square Dance
or a Triangular one? I thought:
“The Cake Walk is not this.”

Megabass through a windstorm
brewed. Comin’ up a cloud.
Cluster of men picking on Telecasters

where fairweather forecasters
dared not tread. A slant-headed
man in a tight-white t-shirt

with eyes like knuckles popping
& engines shaking, demanded
that I give him my First Impressions.

I stood there, silent, as if in
some interrogation chamber, until
the man & I burst out into a laughter!

like you & I when we laugh with a
wildness as if we are still in The Old West
telling tall tales around a camp fire.