16 Lines fo’ a Girl o’ 16

Yo’ mama was a porno queen
Befo’ she was a ho,
An’ come the day ya’ turned 16

She walked on out the do’.
She walked on out the do’ that day
In jus’ the clothes she wo’,

While daddy up ‘n’ had ‘is way
With you the who’ night long.
Now, who in Hell’s the right to say

That what ya’ did was wrong,
That time ya’ waited with a gun
In jus’ yo’ bra ‘n’ thong

To shoot that fool fo’ all he’d done?
To shoot that turkey dead?
To shoot that father of yo’ son
Straight in the fuckin’ head?

My Fav’ritist Thangs
                                                                                  —after Rodgers & Hammerstein

Sunset in Vegas ‘n’ bottles o’ whiskey
Cocaine on mirrors ‘n’ chicks who ‘re frisky
Hellin’ ‘roun havin’ my meanin’less flings
Them there’s a few o’ my fav’ritist thangs

Bright feather boas ‘n’ red satin sashes
Sprinkles o’ glitter on plastic eyelashes
Black leather bustiers laced up with strings
Them there’s a few o’ my fav’ritist thangs

Coppin’ a blowjob jus’ east o’ El Paso
Slingin’ my Stetson aroun’ like a lasso
Drivin’ so fast that it’s like I got wings
Them there’s a few o’ my fav’ritist thangs

When the cops come
When the coke stings
When I go boo hoo
I simply remember my fav’ritist thangs
An’ then I don’t feel so blue

The Ballad o’ the Well-Established Poet, “Johnson Lee”

Now “Johnson Lee,” per my request
Sent me some poetry
To check out fo’ my fledglin’ ‘zine,
But right off I could see

He’d failed to read the guidelines. Still,
I queried anyway
To ask if he might send again. 
Though, he had this to say:

“Go shove your guidelines up your butt!
I’m well-established, see?
Been published all aroun’ the worl’!
You’re nobody to me.”

So, I . . . I went ‘n’ typed ‘im back
Remindin’ him I’d wrote
In rather kind ‘n’ gracious terms
A “Thanks, but no thanks” note.

Well, mean ol’ Johnson Lee, he flamed,
“You gotta lot to learn.
Now, let this be yo’ lesson: watch
Them bridges that ya’ burn,

“‘Cause editors and poets talk
‘Bout amateurs like you.”
An’ that there point—‘bout lessons—seemed
To me the perfect cue . . .

So, what the Hell? I flamed ‘im back—
Typed, “All I’ve really learned
Is you’re a pompous asshole, man,
An’ this here bridge is burned.”

Then wah, wah, wah an’ blah, blah, blah,
I sparred with Johnson Lee,
The “well-established” poet, who
Thought he could pick on me,

‘Til possum-like, I let ‘im type
‘Til he was all typed out,
Then rope-a-dope, I wrote a note
To finish off our bout

That quoted back the dumbass, crude,
An’ threat’nin’ thangs he’d said.
An’, asked ‘im why some no name guy
Like me got in ‘is head.

A day then passed befo’ I heard
From Johnson Lee again,
Who wrote—surprise!—he’d had some drinks
That other evenin’ when

He’d come home from a long, long day,
To—boo hoo!—work so hard
To send me po’ms, an’ allllll to have
Me “play the guidelines card.”

Then, he opined ‘bout editors
Who help each other out,
An’ if that there don’t soun’ contrite
Then all the more to doubt,

Ol’ Johnson Lee, he mustered up
This brief apology;
Wrote, “Yeah, I’d been an asshole, but
That’s not me normally.”

So I—ya’ guessed it!—emailed back,
Tol’ him ‘is idle threat
To smear my name weren’t somethin’ that
I planned to soon forget,

An’ that ‘is cyberbully bunk
Weren’t fine at all with me,
Much less the way he’d tried ‘n’ tried
To push ‘is poetry,

An’ that—from here on out—he’d best
Cease ‘n’ desist, or I
Would drag ‘is sorry ass to court
(Though, that there . . . that’s a lie).

Well, Johnson Lee, he up ‘n’ puked
Some filth I can’t repeat;
A mangled love po’m—ALL IN CAPS—
That I thought read real sweet!

Rejected once, rejected twice,
O, cruel ol’ Johnson Lee,
The well-established asshole, earned
No sympathy from me . . .

See? When it comes to “men o’ rank”
We peons need our rules,
An’ chief among them rules is not
To lightly suffer fools

Who drink ‘n’ brag like cowards do
While flippin’ up their nose,
Paradin’ ‘roun, imperial,
Without a stitch o’ clothes.

So, here I’ll end, an’ thus reveal
That Johnson’s Lee’s real name
Is Rumpelstiltskin—Bwa-Ha-Ha!!!—
An’ that’s an awful shame.