SONOFABITCH

Poetry Potluck

One Shot Wednesday

I remember the first time.

It was a crisp Omaha morning, and I was four--

playing in my front yard when three boys came along.

They were BIG kids--maybe eight or nine--

and one of them said: HEY, YA LITTLE SONOFABITCH!

Just casual like...

I asked him what that word meant,

and he said: Go ask yer mama, sonofabitch!

So I did.

NOTHING...it means NOTHING, she said.

And: Who told you that word?

I led her outside to meet my new friends,

but they had disappeared.

And I couldn't understand why they had gone.

Years later there was a girl named Mary

who lived with me in the Hotel San Cristobal

overlooking the ocean in Old San Juan.

There was a little Italian place nearby

where we would drink wine and she would call me "Ducky."

Then one night we were arguing in bed

and she said:YOU SONOFABITCH

and tore my ring from her finger and threw it against the wall.

Then she disappeared.

And I couldn't understand why she had gone.

Time passed and one day my best old childhood buddy

came to visit me in Tucson. I met him

at the airport and he said: YOU OL' SONOFABITCH!

We caught up on things and downed a few,

then we downed a few more.

Before you knew it the days had flown by

and I was taking him back to the airport

where he did this funny bit, singing: We'll meet again...

don't know where, don't know when...

And then he disappeared.

Two weeks later I got a phone call--

he'd been in a bad car wreck and was lying

in a coma in an Amarillo hospital.

Two days hence he departed this world

without regaining consciousness.

And I didn't understand why he had gone.

But all that was long ago...

and things are gonna be different now!

So I've made me a new rule.

If you're gonna call me a sonofabitch...

you've got to promise not to leave.

LOVERS

They met at the bar.

She was an aspiring lawyer who was taking the exam.

He was a former McDonald's owner--one of the truly disenfranchised. A born again skeptic of reincarnation, he could remember nothing of the deja vu experience he was having.

He said: "Haven't I seen you someplace before?"

She said: "No...I've never been anyplace before."

He said: "Let's blow this pop stand."

She said: "Let's buy a soda first."

He said: "Now is the hour."

She said: "Just give me a minute."

They lived together on Easy Street...until one day they came to a fork in the road. Feeling like she could stick a knife in his back, she spoon-fed him the truth.

She told him to go take a short walk off a long pier--which he tried, several times, but found that he could never quite reach the end.

"Stop dead in your tracks while I find something to murder you with," she cried.

"You kill me," he laughed.

She said: "There can be no other words for what you are...in other words...you make me sick and I'm going to ralf!"

He said: "I knew there was another man!"

She looked around and said, "Where?"

"This is all too confusing," he said. "I want a divorce."

She said: "If you need a good lawyer, I'm available."

"You're available? he said.

She looked him up and down. "Say...haven't I seen you someplace before?"

(For One Shot Wednesday!)