in the thick night

 in the thick night
      by bovine bill bigg 

brenda gender
did the murder
in the month of may 
the man she killed
was often billed
a thin man during day
she hated how
he hated cow
and hated women more
so one day late
just at the gate
she struck him to the floor
it was no feat
he ate no meat
he stood nigh six foot six
no thinner man
no slimmer man
no lard was in the mix
she hit him hard
with no regard
for where the blow would fall
it knacked his pate
with all his weight
he buckled to the floor
she curtsied once
and with a bounce
she sashayed out the door
his being thin
was just not in
she thought as she left there
next time be nice
to girls with lice
keep on your underwear 
this is the tale
of thin man bill
of how he got his pay
for skipping meat
avoiding————
he got no day in court

Lonesome Hobo

 The Lonesome Hobo
          by Rambling Doug 

1.

Ma’am, don’t loan me any money
Sir, don’t give me any cash
Don’t reach deep into your pockets 
Cause you’ll never get it back 
I’m a hobo I am a stranger
With this stick and with this sack 
I’ve walked this road a thousand miles 
And I won’t be turning back
Yes, I’ve walked this road a thousand miles 
And I won’t be turning back

Chorus
I am a lonesome hobo
The road’s my only friend
I’ve walked it for a thousand miles
And I’ll walk it once again 
If you’ll spare a cup of coffee 
Then I’ll be on my way 
I thank you ma’am,
You are too kind 
I tip my hat and say 
That I am just a lonesome hobo 
Now I’ll get out of your way

2.

Don’t pass me any handouts
Forget the golden rule
Don’t feed me bread and chicken
It’s just wasted on this fool
When I was still a young boy
I wondered what I’d do
But I realized it was useless
Money’s for the lucky few
Yes I realized it was useless 
Money’s for the lucky few

Chorus

3.

The road I’m on is lonely
I wonder where it goes
I’m nearly always hungry 
And I’m cold from head to toe 
But I’m a hobo I am a stranger
Don’t worry about my state
Each morning finds me still alive
Knocking at some gate
See, each morning finds me still alive
Here I’m knocking at your gate

Chorus

Sad Princes

 Sad Princes
          by Tsarina Katīnova Uncornaia

        simon 
          schnitzel-kaiser
     hits well
          in the month
                of may
    
                     in may

Crown Prince Rupprecht missed Rathenau about as much after as before Truman Smith visited him on November 15. General Lebendorff on the right and Count Lerchenfelsch on the left and the crown prince in the middle. Not much room for movement. Lebendorff would welcome a putsch, Lerchenfelsch would decry one and he, being monarchy, had no choice but to pretend he had no serious political views. Sad business this of having no opinions. 
     What had happened yesterday, for instance, Rupprecht thought to himself. When Smith had been announced and handed in, he had inwardly sworn. “Zum toeffle,” along with other strong phrases beneath repetition. This is bad enough for the history of a prince, is it not? “To the devil” is not serious, but serious enough when plays and histories are written about one after one is dead. He thought this and more. He thought, what if this dipstick from Yale, this slick and flouncing emissary, this nobody with an agenda, this evangelist with a miserly mission actually asks for opinions from me? What if he has some connections I know little of and, reparations to be paid to the tune of 15 billion over thirty years or so, I irritate him and he goes back to Wilson, and Wilson forces another showdown with France along the Ruhr and we lose the factories we still have? What if . . . .  But here he paused and collected himself. What if, he thought, with greater, if deliberate, calm, what if this Smith resumes discussions, as Ludecke had, of ties to Benito, as if I should have any knowledge of the Italian situation enough to speak favourably of fascism. No, Democrat I am not, but certainly not socialist. 
     This line of thought took him nowhere and he felt a renewed weakness of public personality, which made him inwardly fidgety again. Why do they send schweinwinkles like this to see me? I wish I could be left alone to listen to Wagner or Rudolf in my garden and simply have my drinks when I want without interference? Do I appear regal enough for him? Will I make that impression on Smith that says to him that I am Lurchenfelsch’s and Lebendorff’s equal, if not superior? And what of our seven hundred year reign? Bavarians have forgotten already all that we have taken from them and used for their good. 
     Along these lines, and others even less worthy of reflection, Crown Prince Rupprecht negotiated the waters of his own worth and appearance. When Smith left he said of him that he was a nutcase and should have repeatedly been hit on his cranium and about his head with a beer stein until he showed signs of intelligence or peace, whichever came first. Smith had been especially hard to take of all the foreign callers Rupprecht had ever received. He wanted to know about everything at once. No sooner had he asked a question about Bavarian beer, then he asked one about volkish women. And when he had barely asked that one, and before Rupprecht had even thought of an answer that would smartly show his between the positions of Ludendorff and Lerchenfelsch, Smith came at him with another about the current value of the German Mark, and next about the likelihood of another assassination such as Rathenau’s.
    “Rathenau was a traitor,” burst from Rupprecht before he could stop himself. He had not been able to answer any of the other questions before Smith flipped another at him, so this time, before the question was even asked, he had decided to fling back an answer, any answer, as if the picture that the question painted was a Rorschach. 
     Once started he had to finish. “He hated Germany, and he made too much money on his own before he became Chancellor, and then he gave away too much to the allies. He was a traitor!” Smith looked at him with opened mouth and for the moment his interrogatives stopped. Rupprecht thought to himself, I don’t really believe these things about old Rach but that is what I have heard. I believe nothing about him. He was a fine statesman, but he was a Jew!
     Ruprecht agreed with almost all Bavarians that the Jews were the main reason for Germany’s economic collapse. The result was that now the mark was set at 4500 to the dollar! When Smith finally left, shortly after this outburst of the prince’s, that royal took a bath, went to his garden, drank some gin and ate a palm nut. When he had inwardly settled down and felt he was once again the old Prince, he told himself that he would receive no more visitors. I wish to be melancholy for a week or so and then I will re-decide what mood I am in. Cheers! Here’s to Englehardt, and to Coburg, he said to himself as he stretched out on a bench near his water lilies, white and creamy against the blue of the enamel dishes that held them and the greener water in his little fish pond with its orange goldfish happily skimming about in it.
    

Industrious People

[Written circa 2002]

 Industrious people
          by dougie the doodoo man 

spittin image
wickan carnage 
hitting average
sicken die and
winslow castle 
farmers market
stellar formance 
nifty tightrope
buzzin bees lord
gifted poet
slippery slope and
when i die and
surly rimshot
knock em silly
cancer patient
outhouse antics

Industry is the one thing that sets humans apart from animals. I know two cases that are not to the point. Janet Jeeling and Bill (“Sniper”) Wallop. Both of these individuals did not know each other. Yet, they married in the end. Were married and lived together for six years and 3 1/2 months before the disolvement came through. William (Bill) was on the sex offenders registry. He procured a lobotomy and never again inappropriately touched a woman. More about him in a moment. Janet played for the Wasigaming symphony but after nine years of that she returned to smoking pot with great regularity and then she was just a pot smoker and no symphony orchestra would touch her. More about her after Bill.
     Bill received the nickname “Sniper” because he shot at cars. He had a treehouse built for himself by himself in what he considered quiet woods near Rosemark, Delaware in the early 1970s. He read much in magazines such as Utne and Harrowsmith. First he took a log-building course up in Florida, Michigan (odd name for a town). After that, with the tools that he had been required to purchase, he went back to his home state and county and built a log treehouse back in the woods. The only trouble with the treehouse was that it was not as immune to society and civilization as Bill had thought it would be. Delaware decided to build a highway linking Watchigizzi and the city of Drummock and a four-lane highway quickly appeared within half a mile of Bill’s abode. 
     He lashed out in his rage. Betrayed, he felt, he would betray. He began to shoot at cars from high up in the trees where he lived. Never thinking that he could shoot that distance, he planned the trajectory, he measured the distance with a hydrobader, he scaled the tallest trees to determine angles of descent and wind influences, and finally began, actually, to fire .303 bullets towards the road. He really had no idea that his estimations as correctly and as accurately fitted the nature of the movement of a bullet over distance. Cars were hit, people were injured, one was killed, and then the cops came and took Bill away, and now he languishes in prison in my hometown of Tulusee not many miles from the capital. He will never fire a gun again I have been told by those who know. 
     Janet, too, fired things, but these were of clay and earth. She made pottery. She got into designing pictures of famous people since she had a gift for portraiture. One of the drawings that turned to clay was of a Hells Angels associate accused of murdering a police officer and then tried in a secure courthouse. Janet threw him in the box for the accused, with just his head and torso showing. She had him (and the papers that printed a photo of the sculpture noted this detail duly and unnecessarily) hunched over in such a way that he appeared to be doing something shameful in the portion of the photo below the witness box ledge. Laughter. Nationwide laughter. 
     From then on, Janet focussed on portraying gangland biker men in ludicrous poses. She placed their names, in fact, near the bottom of the sculptures (Ma Bouchard, for instance), much as names are etched onto sports trophies. One sculpture looked as if the biker was in the painful act of peeing against an electric fence, his eyes bugging out in surprise and anguish. Another, with a satisfied grin on his upturned face, appeared to be squatting to defecate before a courthouse where his trial was about to begin, flanked by two offended policeman both four times his size. He resembled a monkey on a chain. Another, with the casual face of an idiot, befouled himself in public while simultaneously eating a Mr. Big chocolate bar with one hand and clawing at his backside with the other. One was busily engaged in an inappropriate public act with another man. Another ate garbage standing in a dumpster. He had an embarrassed “you’ve caught me at it“ grin on his baby face. Each and every biker in all 243 sculptures was diminutive, less than masculine, with thinnish, narrow shoulders, effectively effeminate and given to public defecation and onanism, looking like anything but the potent criminals they wished to be portrayed as. 
     One day Janet disappeared, and has never been heard of since. The sculptures survive. They may be viewed in the museum in the capital where all officially sanctioned art is displayed. The charge is free. Take the whole family to go see it. It will be well worth your while.