Alcatraz, and Back

All I'm saying is this guy, this showbiz
blusterer, bursts in with his "Ray
Charles this" and "Jerry Lewis that," waves a fax
detailing ways to blackmail these "pow-
erful people" — then, like Yuri Andropov,
falls dead at my feet, a real Lou-
Gehrig-streak-over moment,
Heaven's Haul for that guy, but my problems
increase fifty-fold because with Mr.
Jerry-Lewis-scammer dead I look like a John Q.
Killer, complete with celebrity addresses and a map,
leaving aside questions of motive and — O
my God, I haven't even mentioned the ten
nuns who live next door and whose M
O is to make my life a measurable Hell,
partly through some Persian voodoo triple-speak,
quite indecipherable, natch, e.g., "You baba ghanouj [adj.,
really] bad man, we are calling the FBI,
so help you," which happened, and which
totally was not helpful, and partly by encouraging
underclassmen from the seminary to visit me, as if
vengeance of the court-appointed sort wasn't adequate,
which brings me to the present, and my new map, with y- and
x-intercepts, and my new knowledge that Jerry Lewis's basic
yield is, never mind, and that Ray Charles is catching celeb
Z's in Heaven, or in Hell, or in absentia.

Copyright © 2009 Cody Walker All rights reserved
from Shuffle and Breakdown
Waywiser Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission