I began working on this piece in February of 2006. This morning I woke up thinking on it again, and set about more revising. This is one of many reasons to love being a poet; one's creations are organic. They never stop speaking to the writer.
Freud Makes A Move
This bar stinks
of thinned woodsy cologne,
and blue-collar sweat,
and tired pick-up lines.
But it's among a handful
of watering holes
in second-hand buzzed
America where a black-frame
tri-focaled codger can nurse
a fat pipe, indulge
his rumbling death
instinct in peace.
I finger my beard, flash
Marla a wink. She's banging
her bigger fist
on the poker
machine again. Marla---big-boned and dumb,
breath reeking of Frito's.
She's a box-made Sandpaper
Blonde. Five-dollar
glue-on manicure,
Lollipop Shimmer caked
over the crooked half-moon
birthmark on her bottom
lip.
She spreads her thick brunette
forearm across the bar,
hoists herself onto a stool
that wiggles, and moans
under her weight.
I flick the salty red
nut skins
off her elbow
and coo,
"So...tell me about your mother."
Marla sucks the hot gray air
with a goose call cough, and flips
her Mr. Pibb upside down!
She whirls it in a mad
figure-eight above her head, unwinds
the top.
I hear it pop, relieved---phlooossshh,
and too stiff
to dodge.
Muddy rivers
of sweet foam surge
from my eyelids
to my collar, wilt
my crisp bowtie.
It's an old line,
but it still melts
her like slick
ice on my tongue.