Barber jelly nausea
gets you on a streetcar
and your sump-pump sucks away
automatic like the action.
What can you do but ride it out
hang on to your umbrella
and curse your inexhaustible ammunition.
It was strictly a business relationship.
We never took advantage
of bubble gum expense accounts.
In stinky half-room hideaways
illusions aren’t deductible
they’re nest eggs.
Come and lay some more on me
I’m a game preserve.
Dicky with his brand new flat-top
swigging lemonade
comic book king of the housing project
and me, poor beggar.
Little Lulu on the auction block
Bugs Bunny under my arm
Peeking over paper pillars
I catch a glimpse of Dicky’s
French Provincial sister.
She’s tomorrow in her mirror.
Me? I’m yesterday in rags.
Enter Tommy Stoutman
in your custom tailored
Boy Scout khaki
two hundred pounds of high performance
what a heavy pledge!
“What’ll you give me for fifteen Batmen?”
The moldy monuments answer.
The super structure topples.
Fatso and Flat-top
are buried alive.
What can I do?
Spend my lifetime stacking funnies?
I run
with my friendly concussion
and Little Lulu.
Miss Frenchie
is swallowed by the dust
of her war dance.
“Some penance,” cries the cannibal
chop-licking, spitting silver fish.
Excelsior. Excelsior.
And all that sort of crap.
It fills me up.
Dicky and his trusty side-kick
from the land of the living dead
fly sheet-metal kites
send messages that never reach me.
Pony Express man
carrier pigeon
am I that hard to find?
Wasn’t that Dicky
marching for dimes?
A sneer and a crew cut
wrapped up in flannel.
“Your canceled check is your receipt,” he said
winking at the mail man.
And that one
denies he’s Mr. Fatso.
says he’s from Missouri.
I never did trust boy scouts
they rub my bones together
marching, always marching
through my forest sanctuary.
But Little Lulu knows
she keeps me posted
and free
from trail blazers
with hot little merit badges.
CTC
How I came to write this poem:
When I was a kid, comic books were a big and wonderful part of my life. They were a great escape from the mundane. My favorites were Little Lulu, Bugs Bunny, Archie & Veronica, Batman, Superman and Prince Valiant. Occasionally I would get my hands on more gruesome (but innocuous) comics like Tales From The Crypt, Haunt Of Fear, The Vault Of Horror and others of that genre. Most of the time I bought my comic books from my weekly allowance or from money earned by babysitting . Sometimes I got paid for doing various odd jobs for neighbors; dusting knickknacks, scrubbing floors, or going to the store for them if they ran out of something they needed desperately, like a loaf of bread or a pack of cigarettes.
Another way of refurbishing my comic book stock and which didn’t cost me a dime (the actual cost of a comic book in those days was 10 - 25 cents), was swapping. These swap meets were usually arranged by the ring leader of the neighborhood kids whose name was Dicky Lacroy. He had stacks and stacks of comic books on the floor in his room, and that’s where these swap meets were held. The only kid who had more comic books than Dicky, was Tommy Stoutman, a very large boy scout. Dicky had to share the bedroom with his older sister who was not very friendly and resented the intrusion whenever there was a swap meet on Dicky’s side of the room. There was a makeshift divider of some sort, only about three feet high, running down the middle of the room and splitting it in two. Dicky’s bed was on one side, and his sister’s on the other. The divider was there only to mark territory and afforded no privacy at all for either of them. It was a joke.
Dicky was a very smug kid who wore his hair in the latest style called a flattop. He used some awful smelling pomade to keep every hair in place and sticking straight up on the top of his head like the bristles of a scrub brush. Tommy probably weighed quite a lot, and had to have his boy scout uniform custom made. I was the only girl at the swap meets because, to my knowledge at least, I was the only girl in the project who loved comic books. I envied Dicky’s older sister because even though she had to share a room with Dicky, her side of the room was fit for a princess; white French Provincial furniture which included a small vanity and a canopy bed. It was the first time in my life to see a canopy bed and it made an indelible impression on me.
The years passed. I moved away from the neighborhood, got married, had children. Once a man with a crew cut and a business suit came to my door collecting for the March of Dimes. He looked vaguely familiar. I asked him if he was Dicky. He said “no”. Another time I started to suspect that our very large mail man might be Tommy. I asked him if he was. He said “no”. And yet another time I was on the trolley going somewhere or other and a man got on and sat on the seat in front of me. He had a strange odor, the odor of Dippity Doo, the stuff Dicky used to keep his flat top spiffy. All of a sudden, because of that odor, the memory of those comic book days in the old neighbor hood rushed back to me like a flood.
I went home and wrote a poem about it.
gets you on a streetcar
and your sump-pump sucks away
automatic like the action.
What can you do but ride it out
hang on to your umbrella
and curse your inexhaustible ammunition.
It was strictly a business relationship.
We never took advantage
of bubble gum expense accounts.
In stinky half-room hideaways
illusions aren’t deductible
they’re nest eggs.
Come and lay some more on me
I’m a game preserve.
Dicky with his brand new flat-top
swigging lemonade
comic book king of the housing project
and me, poor beggar.
Little Lulu on the auction block
Bugs Bunny under my arm
Peeking over paper pillars
I catch a glimpse of Dicky’s
French Provincial sister.
She’s tomorrow in her mirror.
Me? I’m yesterday in rags.
Enter Tommy Stoutman
in your custom tailored
Boy Scout khaki
two hundred pounds of high performance
what a heavy pledge!
“What’ll you give me for fifteen Batmen?”
The moldy monuments answer.
The super structure topples.
Fatso and Flat-top
are buried alive.
What can I do?
Spend my lifetime stacking funnies?
I run
with my friendly concussion
and Little Lulu.
Miss Frenchie
is swallowed by the dust
of her war dance.
“Some penance,” cries the cannibal
chop-licking, spitting silver fish.
Excelsior. Excelsior.
And all that sort of crap.
It fills me up.
Dicky and his trusty side-kick
from the land of the living dead
fly sheet-metal kites
send messages that never reach me.
Pony Express man
carrier pigeon
am I that hard to find?
Wasn’t that Dicky
marching for dimes?
A sneer and a crew cut
wrapped up in flannel.
“Your canceled check is your receipt,” he said
winking at the mail man.
And that one
denies he’s Mr. Fatso.
says he’s from Missouri.
I never did trust boy scouts
they rub my bones together
marching, always marching
through my forest sanctuary.
But Little Lulu knows
she keeps me posted
and free
from trail blazers
with hot little merit badges.
CTC
How I came to write this poem:
When I was a kid, comic books were a big and wonderful part of my life. They were a great escape from the mundane. My favorites were Little Lulu, Bugs Bunny, Archie & Veronica, Batman, Superman and Prince Valiant. Occasionally I would get my hands on more gruesome (but innocuous) comics like Tales From The Crypt, Haunt Of Fear, The Vault Of Horror and others of that genre. Most of the time I bought my comic books from my weekly allowance or from money earned by babysitting . Sometimes I got paid for doing various odd jobs for neighbors; dusting knickknacks, scrubbing floors, or going to the store for them if they ran out of something they needed desperately, like a loaf of bread or a pack of cigarettes.
Another way of refurbishing my comic book stock and which didn’t cost me a dime (the actual cost of a comic book in those days was 10 - 25 cents), was swapping. These swap meets were usually arranged by the ring leader of the neighborhood kids whose name was Dicky Lacroy. He had stacks and stacks of comic books on the floor in his room, and that’s where these swap meets were held. The only kid who had more comic books than Dicky, was Tommy Stoutman, a very large boy scout. Dicky had to share the bedroom with his older sister who was not very friendly and resented the intrusion whenever there was a swap meet on Dicky’s side of the room. There was a makeshift divider of some sort, only about three feet high, running down the middle of the room and splitting it in two. Dicky’s bed was on one side, and his sister’s on the other. The divider was there only to mark territory and afforded no privacy at all for either of them. It was a joke.
Dicky was a very smug kid who wore his hair in the latest style called a flattop. He used some awful smelling pomade to keep every hair in place and sticking straight up on the top of his head like the bristles of a scrub brush. Tommy probably weighed quite a lot, and had to have his boy scout uniform custom made. I was the only girl at the swap meets because, to my knowledge at least, I was the only girl in the project who loved comic books. I envied Dicky’s older sister because even though she had to share a room with Dicky, her side of the room was fit for a princess; white French Provincial furniture which included a small vanity and a canopy bed. It was the first time in my life to see a canopy bed and it made an indelible impression on me.
The years passed. I moved away from the neighborhood, got married, had children. Once a man with a crew cut and a business suit came to my door collecting for the March of Dimes. He looked vaguely familiar. I asked him if he was Dicky. He said “no”. Another time I started to suspect that our very large mail man might be Tommy. I asked him if he was. He said “no”. And yet another time I was on the trolley going somewhere or other and a man got on and sat on the seat in front of me. He had a strange odor, the odor of Dippity Doo, the stuff Dicky used to keep his flat top spiffy. All of a sudden, because of that odor, the memory of those comic book days in the old neighbor hood rushed back to me like a flood.
I went home and wrote a poem about it.
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