The ghost of Pieter Brueghel the Elder haunts Folly Beach’s Folly Gras celebration
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Asshole
the author circa 1976
I was such a loser in the mid-Seventies [see above photo] that I actually failed at dropping out of grad school. That’s right. Talking about the epitome of incompetence, failing at dropping out of school ranks right up there with attempting suicide by swallowing a handful of artificial sweeteners.
It’s not all that long of a story. After getting dumped by an ex-fiancée in July of ’76, I said to myself, “This here grad school thang ain’t working out.”[1] I decided to go back to Summerville and tread water because, after all, home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.[2]
Impoverished, I had been working two jobs (tending bar in the University Union, washing dorm dishes). Unable to afford textbooks, I checked Whitman, Dickinson, Hardy, Epson, Yeats, and, Auden out of libraries, racking up fines as fast as empty beer cans. In the wee hours, I slapped together underdeveloped essays on manual typewriters. When I made it to class, I shuffled in sporting pre-grunge grunge and reeking of cannabis. Occasionally, I might manage an insightful comment in class or turn an arresting phrase in an essay, but, that ain’t gonna get you a tenure track job, much less a degree.
On the plus side, my fellow students treated me deferentially because not-seeming-to-give-a-shit somehow had come to be – maybe always has been – an admired American trait; on the minus side, my professors were absolutely immune to my slouching charm.
So, on the sunny Monday morning after my revelation that my learning to read and write in a foreign language, passing comps, and writing a board approved dissertation was not likely to occur in the next academic year, I informed my bosses I was quitting, dropping out of school, going home. I blamed my sudden departure on a family emergency, which was true in the sense that a series of family emergencies over the course of my young life had jangled my nerves. I was having what was called in those days “A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.”
Of course, I didn’t bother to inform the University of my departure.
* * *
Three weeks later I very slowly came to consciousness in a hospital in Hilton Head. To this day, I have no idea how long I was there or how I got home. I do know that no charges were filed and that I had stitches still in my back, sutures I assumed were self-dissolving but weren’t.
I had forgotten how much Summerville sucks. My landlady/mother insisted that I participate in cattle calls for manual laborers at temp agencies, which got real old real fast even though they never chose me. [again, see above photo].
So I called my pal Jake-the-Snake, who had been placed in a managerial position at the Golden Spur, the Student Union bar, and his boss hired me on the condition I could cop work study status, hoop jumping I resented, especially since there was a whole slew of new bartenders who had been hired straight up, people like Veda Smith and Judy Birdsong, legitimate graduate students with assistantships who didn’t need jobs in the first place.
Nevertheless, I successfully accomplished the task of being officially classified as financially challenged, and found myself once more racking up student loan debt, tending bar, and slapping together underdeveloped essays on manual typewriters in the wee hours.
But I vowed to myself that I would never ever fail at dropping out of grad school again, and indeed, at the end of the spring semester of ’77, I successfully pulled it off!
Radio Noir
Click grey arrow above for sound.
Airboat, bayou,
black cat, voodoo
Sam Spade, razor blade,
rattlessnake, bad synapse,
prison break, loan lapse,
nylon rope, smoking
dope
coke
crack . . .
. . . static . . .
Hitchhike, tattoo,
peg leg, hoodoo,
tat rat, concrete block,
trunk bang, thump-thump-thump,
shitcan, arm stump,
nylon rope, prison punk.
dope
coke
crack . . .
. . . static . . .
Knock knock.
Who dat?
Po-lice.
hoo-hoo hoo-hoo
Crash door, on the floor,
rasp frisk, arm twist
pistol whip, deep shit . . .
dope
coke
crack . . .
. . . static . . .
On ’95 Headed South to Key West
Click the great arrow above for sound:
When I put my hand upon that bible
(its old leather cover was cracked),
I wondered how many hands, both black and white,
were as steady as mine taking that oath.
I slowly raised my right hand and swore
to tell the truth, the whole truth,
nothing but the truth – so help me God.
I said it as if the Lord was as real as you and me.
I looked each juror softly in the eye,
the way Jesus might, if he was on trial.
* * *
They claimed I had to know the 4 kilos
were hidden in those bags, mashed
under wads of dirty clothes.
“No, sir, I did not,” I said. “I swear,
I did not know, would have hid
them better if I had.”
The fat man snarled; his sarcasm dripped,
“We’re supposed to believe you didn’t look?”
“No sir, I don’t believe in snooping
through other people’s property.”
The fat man lost his cool, sensing he might lose,
raised his voice, “What about the smell?
The patrolmen could smell it, the K-9s went wild.”
I sighed an exhausted sigh and said,
“With all due respect, sir, I’m no dog;
plus I lost me some olfactory in the Iraqi war.
You can check my records on that,” I said.
* * *
My PD, she played a role as well,
was less a Yankee, more of a good ol’ gal.
She appealed to the jury’s sense of fair play.
“Let us hope,” she said, hand on heart,
“we have not come to that sad day
when we’re so cynical
we ‘re incapable of
mustering a reasonable doubt
in favor of a fellow human being.
“He could be your brother or son.
Let us hope we can still manage
to muster a reasonable doubt.”
* * *
There’s nothing quite like getting out of jail.
You feel so free it’s almost worth
getting locked up to get out again.
You look up and see clouds overhead,
and in your car with the windows rolled down,
you can feel the wind blow back your hair
as you bid adieu to that goddamned town.
You’re free to take this road or that,
free to head north, south, east, or west,
free to holler a rebel yell – you’re free again –
on ’95 headed south to Key West.
Too Many Dark Nights
Dorothea Lange
Click grey area above for sound
Oh, Leah, I ‘d resign tomorrow
if I could steel myself and endure
mom’s patronizing, smug I-told-you-so,
but no, I’ll continue to slog my way
through this damned Despond of Despair,
continue to suffer our insufferable DA.
No, I’m good at least for one more year,
my own self-imposed sentence, you might say.
It’s almost always drugs. Smack, crack
meth, Ecstasy. With the resources
we waste prosecuting weed, we could feed
so many food insecure kids! We need
to get them out of those trailers
into pre-K if this unrelenting
cycle of poverty is ever to cease!
We’re talking Dorothea Lange like squalor here.
Let me tell you about these two clients of mine,
Jimmy Joshua Jeffcoat and Henry David Dobson,
as different as night and day, but in
a similar plight. Unable to make their bail,
they share the same cell. Jeffcoat’s a creep,
with pitted methadonic rotting teeth.
Dobson, on the other hand, reads Oscar Wilde
and flashes a crooked grin of orthodontic white.
Jeffcoat’s doomed to serve at least seven,
if not more, but Dobson wants, as he says,
“a jury of my peers to decide.” Who knows?
He’s kind of charismatic. DOB 4/1/75.
He sports a full head of slicked back hair.
A ruddy face, creased, furrowed, but kind.
I’d say he’s suffered way too much sun,
and a few too many dark nights to boot.
He calls me “Miss” in a formal sort of way,
and he’s practically tattooless, the only one
his dead son’s name, in between his fingers,
upside down from our perspective.
Yes, I guess he could be gay, though I hadn’t
thought of that. But, yes, you’re right, the tat
is indeed a man’s name, and yes, Wilde, could be,
but if I had to bet, I’d bet he’s straight.
When this gig’s over, I’ll bugaloo back
to Boca, having done my time.
Might go grad school, SCAD, get an MFA
in photography. I’ve learned being a lawyer
is not for me. Should have listened to my
heart instead of my mom. Oh, sure, she’s proud
of what she’s made of me, my Ivy League degree,
her youngest brand name of a daughter.
When Jimmy Jeffcoat’s Meth Lab Blew
Click the grey button above for sound
When Jimmy Jeffcoat’s meth lab blew,
me and Tiny Wade was smoking a joint
back behind outside the Stop and Go.
Boom. One blast. BOOM. Tiny jumped
about a foot and a half, like a bullet or bigger
was headed his way. “Got damn, what was that?”
I told him I reckoned a transformer blew,
or maybe a sonic boom? but then we heard a siren’s
whoop-whoop and knew that something bad was up.
“For sure, it ain’t no Islamic terrorist,” I joked.
“Ain’t nothing in this shitty skank ass town
worth the trouble of blowing up.”
* * *
We still ain’t recovered from that tornado
two years ago. The kids gone off to college
ain’t never coming back. Tallahassee, Orlando,
Atlanta, they got movie theaters and restaurants.
Their parks ain’t littered with them empty canisters
the teens been huffing on all night long.
* * *
I hear they hauled Jimmy down to Duval County.
He lost his dog and parrot, both burnt to a crisp,
that parrot that perched and shat on Jimmy’s shoulder,
like Jimmy was some long lost landlocked pirate.
“Arrggh,” Jimmy’d growl,” and the parrot’d go
“Arrggh” over and over. I swunny it got old.
I suspect Jimmy ain’t laughing right now,
and I know for sure the parrot ain’t,
and that dog won’t keep me up ever again
barking his chained-up ass off all night long.
Yep, the sun comes up, and the sun goes down,
and now there’s one less loser in this po-dunk town.
The Back Roads to Tallahassee
Click the grey arrow above for sound.
Took the back roads to Tallahassee
to avoid the monotony of mile markers,
dead armadillos, and exit signs.
Took the back roads and took my time.
Didn’t make it quick enough to see him die,
but my step-mama filled me in,
sucking on a Marlboro like a man,
“A horrible death, a horrible death,” she said,
over and over, shaking her head.
I didn’t know what to say. “Too bad.”
“He fought it hard,” she said, “screamed
‘Get that Gotdamn light out of my face,’
then up and passed.” She’d took a picture
and showed it to me. Looked like
all dead people look – his eyes froze,
his mouth froze open like a fish.
No, my daddy and me didn’t get along,
the house not big enough to hold
the two of us. Like in that
Springsteen song. We’d cuss each other
and sometimes come to blows. Of course,
me 35, half his age, been able whip him
for a while. He sure whipped me
back then before, cracking a buckled belt.
Can’t quite pity the poor dead bastard,
laying there waxy with his hair slicked back
in that Sears and Roebuck suit, striped tie,
his mouth glued closed, his eyes glued shut.
His daddy beat him, and that daddy
beat that daddy before that. I ain’t
got no offspring, but got my own
business, mind my own business,
so I have the time to take my time,
to take the back roads, to avoid
traffic, to miss all them 18-wheelers in a hurry
to reach them warehouses they can’t abide.
On the Slave Ship Lolly Pop
Click the grey button above for sound
for Nancy Reagan
I used to stuff my face with candy
when I was a little boy,
couldn’t cop enough Mary Janes,
would kill for an Almond Joy.
Then I graduated to the Real Thing – Coke.
I was popping five cans a day,
plopping my dimes down on the counter
under caffeine and sugar’s sway.
Now I’m hooked on heroin,
am little more than a thug.
Wish I’d known then what I know now –
that sugar is the gateway drug.
Out of Action
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Out of action, losing traction,
I slid down South, a bad mistake.
Florida is flat, crawling with con men,
rattlesnakes, swamps, and tattooed
waitresses who call you “Sugar Britches.”
Shooting for Key West, got waylaid in Mayo,
Way down upon the Suwannee River,
A taint of a town (tain’t panhandle,
tain’t peninsula), impoverished
in more ways than one. No fun.
Met Loquacia at a juke joint call’d Phaz 2,
a concrete block shit hole
not far from the “Bo Gator Motel” where
I was staying – not clean, not well-lighted –
and my money was dwindling.
Loquacia was into iguanas, had them
inked all over her skin, crawling up
her back from butt crack to shoulder
blade and up over down betwixt her tits.
Just got one tat, the name of my dead son,
Thom, one letter from left to right
in the crotches between my fingers.
I open my hand and spread the span,
and poof! his name appears in Gothic.
Anyways, I spent my days scrounging,
hooked up, thanks to L, with this cat who claimed
to be from JA, Mo-Bay, but could have been
some South Carolina geechie for all I know,
but he paid me good to make a run.
Seems he supplied some squids
at the base up in Jacksonville.
2 kilos of what the geechie calls ganga
stowed in the trunk of my Chevy
in duffel bags. What could go wrong?
Long story short. I’m writing this
from the Duval County Jail. Loquacia
ain’t darkened the door. Silver lining,
my rap sheet ain’t that bad: shoplifting,
public drunkenness, simple possession.
Working with a public defender, an
idealistic Jewish girl named Rachel.
She asked me about the tats, and sort
of teared up, she did. Maybe she can get
me off – and by that I mean out of jail.
Anyways, here I sit, way
out of action, with absolutely no
traction. a semi-literate Oscar Wilde,
waiting for my upcoming trial
where I’ll sing like Joan Baez.
Snow Day
Click gray arrow above for sound
Drooping mimosas,
bent like old beggars,
weighted down with icy teardrops
presage the possibility of
snapping limbs and downed lines,
no heat, no Internet.
This so-called accumulation ain’t even an inch.
Up North this icy sneeze ain’t nothing,
a sprinkling, a dusting.
School kids at 0 centigrade
probably line up in Connecticut
outside the Cafeterorium,
like little dragons, their breaths vapor,
their heads hooded,
their hands gloved or mittened.
Not at school our young ones. They’re
outside celebrating a snow day,
scraping crunchy white veneer
to make a stunted sleet man –
Lilliputian, malformed,
a tiny Alexander Pope sort of construction.
Many have never seen snow –
or what’s passing for snow –
so they’re Christmas Eve excited.
Later, if the power goes, they’ll enjoy
the lighting of hurricane lamps,
but I sure hope not.
Jesus, today has to be my mother’s
very last snow day, and come to think of it,
I’ll not see many more myself,
down here in Dixie, so let the lights flicker,
let the night turn black.
Let nature force us to feel the cold,
to feel alive, cocooned beneath roofs,
comforters, covers and sheets
beneath the dazzle of unseen stars.
You Do Hoodoo 