Abner McGreedy, after beating up his wife

One drunken afternoon

Lurched out beyond his backyard

And was swallowed up in some black-green muckhole

Never  to be seen again.

They organized a search party;

Got lights and rope and grappling hooks;

Stood irresolute around the bubbling pit;

And smoked their cigarettes till dawn

The sighing cesspool stopped bubbling

Two weeks later, in the relentless sun.

Soon afterwards the muck turned into clay

Just before the whole plot was sold

To expand the Mega shopping mall next door.

Pilings were driven in the muddy stew;

Bulldozers plowed the ground,

Leaving canyons of rust and standing pools

Of brackish water

That drowned forever sad-sack bones.

Eventually, walls and windows rose

Over Abner McGreedy’s presumed to be

Final resting place

It took his wife six years to get the settlement

From New York Life, but once she did

She opened a pub there in the new mall.

Named it Abner’s Rest

And did very well for herself, I hear,

As a bartender-ette

Selling drinks with cute pastel umbrellas

That she called Sinkholes.

And on the jukebox, if you hit C-18

The Beatles sang

O bla-di, O bla-da

Life goes on…la!

Lolly-lolly, life goes on

06/11/2001

Posted on 12/06/2002
Copyright © 2024 Ken Harnisch