Today's poem is by Scott Bailey
Why Should I Stand for Jesus?
When I win four hundred dollars at the National Tobacco Spitting Contest,
I buy a Civic, the paint peeling. I feel a Holy-Ghost freedom when I pass
The fat, grinning, rich, daddy's boy who calls me Buckteeth Ugly, laughing
At my fake Reeboks. When he passes me in his silver Trans Am,Bumper sticker Eat My Grits, I floor it; my motor blows, and I coast
To the side of the road, fat boy flipping me the bird, driving on,
Most likely to Wards for a Big One. I walk down a hill to a porch
Where an old woman stitches a quilt; she tells me to take it slow,Just as she is, sipping on a glass of warm milk, sitting in her rocker,
Waiting for her dogs, already in heaven, who met their fates
On the road. I call Dad on her phone, a red rotary box, just like Grandma's
On the wall, under a stuffed sea bass that Grandpa caught whileHoneymooning on the coast. Dad arrives, tractor chain in hand,
And I drive attached to his beat-up blue Chevrolet with dents from pulp-wooding,
The truck that my cousin and I drive to downtown Magee.
It's Crazy Day, an annual eventwooden ducks, benches with heart-shaped backs,Peanut brittle, hotdogs and powdered doughnutsthat kind of crazy;
People crowd the streets to show off fancy cars, sparkling rims, spoilers,
Motorola antennas. We never score a date, only invitations for mud-bog,
Beer-guzzles. After months of looking, we place a newer-model motorIn an olderjunk frame. Dad loans it to me after my brother wrecks his car,
Missing a woman in her elderly scooter but hitting a hamburger shack.
The body's not completely totaled, so Uncle Ulmer and Dad
Repeatedly pull the car with a tractor into a pine until it's beyond repair.When we realize that the pine won 't live, the sapling my brother
Won as a prize for selling the most pies for Smokey-the-Bear Awareness Week,
It's a cold morning before school, the day my classmates swear to a walkout
When our teachers don't get a raise. I crank the car, such God-awful screaming.I pop the hood to find guts, stool, hair, and fluffy tail pieces splattered
All over that newly installed motor. Another kitten, its butt bald without a tail,
Wobbles out from under the car that dies and won 't crank, so I have to ride
The bus, bus 125 where I fight Tanya. Four years prior, she slaps my glassesOff, calls me Sissy. I slam her on the floorboard and commence to punch,
Then her tall brother's on my back, scratching me, kids screaming, Kick that bitch's ass!
Till this day, I don't know if they were referring to me or to Tanya.
Her father comes to our house, and Dad whips me with a switch,Tells her father that I won't cause any more trouble. I'm confused.
I'm just standing up for myself. But Dad says if I'm doing any standing up,
I should be standing for Jeeeazuss. He drives a forklift at a plant all day,
So he knows the importance of standing. The walkout is a success,Because we make it on T.V. despite Principal Bowen demanding that we return
To class, but we say, Hell No! We Won't Go, all the way down Main Street.
I hear that Tanya has a lazy eye with stigmatism, like a team of horses
Pulling in opposing directions. She's married, wearing Dollar GeneralMakeup and feeding her kids bologna and welfare-cheese sandwiches.
That serves her right. Maybe, she'll think twice before slapping another sissy.
Who knows where she and Fat Boy end, but I know Uncle Ulmer's
Tilling gardens and Grandpa's spilling heavenly seeds, that old ladyTaking it slow, stitching, sipping on a glass of milk, alongside her dogs
Panting with purring kittens, all watching Dad drive that forklift
While praying to win the lottery. I don't want to live or die. I want to be.
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Copyright © 2014 Scott Bailey All rights reserved
from Thus Spake Gigolo
NYQ Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
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