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write a country song about it
by Gabriel RicardThe black angels only sing their 60’s hits
over the houses where people do things,
like make their crosses in the bathtub water.
The houses where people hide
those loud, spooky, old TV sets,
and then forget where they put them.
All the other homes can just go ahead,
and hang on the same lazy rope.
He read that somewhere,
And liked it so much he had it written on a thousand grains of rice,
for a wedding he wasn’t really nuts about to begin with.
This won’t surprise anybody,
but he’s screwed up enough
to know exactly how many times,
you can listen to your drunk grandfather
rant his way through the family photo album
between Heaven’s last gas station and Chicago.
It’s seven. Might have been eight,
but she called him in Tennessee,
read him the riot act with a fake sonogram
and told him not to come back at all.
Like that run wasn’t depressing enough.
Every bus station was more like a bedroom
doubling as a motel that charges by the half-hour.
Not everyone wants to talk about the weather,
during the best five minutes of the whole working week.
He was glad to get back home.
Not so much to find out
that his parents had gotten back together
with plans to have twins
on their fiftieth anniversary next fall.
Dad dyed his hair black.
Mom sold the farm to go back to film school.
The old comic books weren’t in the attic anymore.
Boom!
A typhoon sweeps through Austin, Texas
and takes his second-place one-and-only
away to the dreamy newsreels of 1938.
The actual location is parts best left unknown,
but everyone who runs into him at parties
tells him she was broken, overweight in the summer
and dangerously thin in the winter.
They tell him to write a country song about it.
To remember that he can do better
and to try not to let them down next time.
His parents are busy,
and their parents have gotten together
to sue them for no particular reason.
He takes all this in. He breathes in two packs a day,
ignores the Presidential election.
It might be time to drink enough
to punch one of the only decent cops in town.
They’ve been friends for years,
and get together every Tuesday to complain
about their respective lives and careers.
Both of them agree
that mistakes were made along the way.
10/24/2011 Posted on 10/24/2011
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Meghan Helmich on 10/25/11 at 02:31 AM I see you trying some new things here, and I like it. It's more than just a fella kicking around his old dust of a memory. It's a whole family affair, and I feel invited to watch the whole damn thing. |
| Posted by Nadia Gilbert Kent on 10/25/11 at 08:44 AM Really enjoyed this - in particular the juxtaposition of "riot act" and "sonogram." I would watch this short. |
| Posted by Nadia Gilbert Kent on 10/25/11 at 08:45 AM Also, it reminds me of the album All Hail West Texas by The Mountain Goats. In a good way. |
| Posted by W. Mahlon Purdin on 10/25/11 at 01:26 PM Gabriel, that is really a wonderful poem. When I read poetry I start off with the thought, "I'll read until it dies." Meaning until the poem goes off the track of engagement into the ditch of indulgence or incomprehensibility, or some other something like that. So, I started off on "write a country song about it" and read every word. I'm still thinking about it. You have a great talent. I'm still thinking about it. Still engaged. Many thanks. Made my day. -- Bill |
| Posted by A. Reed on 10/25/11 at 06:34 PM Somehow if it was they would have Gucci boots and buy their poultry at the grocery store. |
| Posted by Lori Blair on 10/31/11 at 08:37 PM Perhaps this is how country music came to be? lol..I loved this and had to read it a few more times because I just didn't want it to end! Awesome write! |
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