Poet
As Bad Guy
for Kenneth Rexroth
I
like to enter small jerkwater towns
with engine roaring, then rock to a stop
and park before a group of local clowns
to make a cigarette-dangling entrance.
I glance past them with a frown,
puffing, turning my collar up,
and digging my hand deep down
in my trench-coated stealth;
then weasel my eyes around
for some unknown assailant and proceed.
I
like to imagine skulking by
they think I’m some professional syndicate-hood,
ex-convict, or disreputable private-eye
come to douse with gasoline the chimney
of the mayor, to swell the bellies
of their best examples of virginity,
or rubber-hose their schoolmarm editor
whose outraged expose in the Monthly
Journal led to my untimely downfall.
I’d
like to pull it off
just once, get past that sweet old frump
grandmothering me a smile that scoffs:
you naughty boy, you’ve been off drowning cats
or making bombs again, but we love
you just the same. And in a way, I guess
they do. At least I can’t maintain the bluff
when the flat bellies of their girls shake
with giggles but not terror. It’s too much.
I button the top button of my hate
against the piercing onslaught of their love
and smile, to show I’m just a country boy at heart.
--Ron
Offen
Copyright © 1963 by Ron Offen
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