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The Poems of Frank Nusbickel
Rap City, Minor, B
Boy in baggy blues,
Boombox hanging and
banging against his leg.
Baseball cap not backwards
but bendified oblique.
T shirt a billowy billboard
for some band not yet bygone.
Way too cool to
bop to the beat,
his stroll
is a Jack tar roll
with nothin to do with rock and.
His hip hop rap ripples
with repetitive rhymes -
Boastful bluster in
alternative alliteration.
Boosted bass blasts,
blowing away
city bird songs,
bothering blue-hairs
by the bus stop,
bringing bad-blood
and back-at-ya barks
between the boy and
black leather bystanders
but
it can't do nothing
to banish
that ol' boogie woogie
barreling eight to the bar
'round my soul.
At the Drive-in
At the drive-in they had
ramps where you would park your car,
lean back in your seat
and watch a movie on a giant screen.
Not a giant screen like a giant screen TV
but real GIANT screen: forty feet high
and a hundred feet long.
At the drive-in they had swings
and they had see-saws and slides and sand-boxes
and they needed the sand-boxes because
at the drive-in
they had the whole thing paved in asphalt
and strewn with gravel
(‘least the drive-ins that I saw.
Out far and away from my childhood
they had their drive-ins in tire rutted
cow pastures - just the GIANT screen
in the middle of an open field
planted with rows of poles of iron that sprouted
twin speakers like metallic corn stalks)
They had snack-bars with
Disneyland-like queues in
brilliant colored zig-zags.
At one drive-in I went to,
they had a little train
that chugged and puffed its chain-driven way
around the whole place,
inside and outside the fence
still the longest and best train-trip I ever had.
At the drive-in they had
the biggest restrooms I ever saw -
bigger even than the ones at my school
Thirty urinals
with thirty people - THIRTY of ‘em-
all peeing at the same time,
I'd never seen anything like it
Never seen anything like
what they had at the drive-in
and never will again.
Drive-ins, Dads, Denial
Three whiny brats
in the back-seat of a Ford Falcon
Begging the old man to
buy for us over priced drive-in snacks -
all we ever got was pop-corn
the red and white box with the dancing usher in the pill-box hat
But what we wanted was what they showed us
up there on the big screen
A burger!
Succulent, juicy and forty feet in diameter
or animated, dancing, smiling - in a parade
of tasty treats
shouting and singing
in a cha-cha beat
"Let's go to the snack bar;Let's go to the snack bar"
A chorus soon joined in every back seat
of every car.
Because the snack bar
(oh, the most garish of places)
was where you could find
those dancing snacks
including that gustatory Grail -
hamburgers of mystery meat -
resting untouched for hours
(coulda been weeks;
coulda been forever as far as we knew -
we never ate one)
resting under the warming red-orange glow
of the infra-red lights,
shining from their science-fiction fixtures
giving an eerie, otherwordly radiance
to the foil-wrap that said "Mm-mm!"
with an exclamation point.
"Mm-mm!"
Loosely wrapped in foil bags
nestled together under the 100 degrees
of infra-red heat -
each Mm-mm! snack must have served
as an individual incubator,
a petri dish with pickles and mustard
for teeming billions and Salmonillions
of germs and disease -
none of which was ever transmitted -
because (back in those days)
everybody's Dad
was too smart to buy a $2.00 burger
for a whiney eight-year old
The Gratitude of A Poet
Beggin' pardon, your Lordships and Ladies
We come here askin' your leave
For to illustrate for thee
that great tapestry weaved,
not by our own unworthy selves
but by him who in heaven dwells
Once't unfurled, it reveals a scene
of some folks grand and others mean
And 'tis true, 'tis the way it always has been
There's ups and downs, and poets in between
Them that's up, like Ladies and Lords
Have the giving of orders to downs
But it being the will of Heaven above
There's no order to poets or clowns
For poets, tis only to whims that we caters
And it's much better that than diggin' for taters
For diggin' up taters is back breaking tough
Much harder than versin' and rhymin' and stuff
Leave us to dream of sweet life and lost loves
For the lot of a poet is just hard enough
wi'out diggin' for taters or some other such toil
So damn the King, praise his lady, bless the soil
Just don't ask us to dig no tubers to boil
nor for skinning and slicing and frying in oil
In our own way, we're happy to be sarvin'
The will of the great creator
A copper in our hand, keeps us from starvin'
And from havin' to dig for pertaters.
Bobbie Lee's Butt
I went downtown to the choke and puke
just to scarf some burgers down
I also wanted to see that sweet Bobbie Lee
who had the finest strut in town
Now Bobbie doesn't walk with no
languid ocean kind of roll
Naw, she pumps 'em like a fullback
still a yard from the goal
Metronome hips? For the way she flips?
Man that don't begin to tell it!
Girl’s got a walk that's as liquid and plump
as an oyster after you shell it!
I've heard said, her butt moves
like two cats in a tight sack fightin'
Others say its more in the way
of some jello that's been hit by lightning
Now Bobbie Lee worked the tables
so she was always walking by
and I knew that day I'd have more to say
than just "Howdy Bobbie" or "Hi"
So I said "Hey Baby - could I get in your pants maybe,
if you ain't engaged or going steady?"
She gave it some thought then said "No, thanks a lot,
I got one asshole in there already!"
Now for some other kind of fool without my kind of cool
that might have been too much to take
But as she swung it away I just leaned out to say
"Well then bring me some fries to go with that shake!"
The Diet
I'm begging you - Oh, please
I'd even get down on my knees
just for a bite of cheese
or anything that might ease
this HUNGER.
Where is my dinner? No this can't be it,
Look at the size, this isn't fit
for the child of a pygmy, let alone me,
bring me a portion that at least I can see.
Bring the leg of an ox or a half a whole lamb
and two loaves of bread and three pots of jam.
Good God, I'm pleading, please hear what I say
I need some real food, and I need it today.
I can't live on oranges and burnt whole wheat toast.
I want a thick juicy steak, no, some chops, no, a roast.
A large crusted roast with a sauce of Bearnaise
is just what I need to relieve this malaise,
that's been brought about largely by a lack of mayonnaise.
A lack of mayonnaise, yes, that's been my plight
I eat none in the daytime and more none at night
(Which reminds me of a story about a man in a convent
but that won't be told, due to x-rated content)
My appetite's still ravening, I'm famished, how I crave
just one last decent meal before I'm carted to my grave.
Is this how I'm supposed to live? I reject all that I love
in order to buy some smaller pants to fit me like a glove?
I'm not sure, but I think not - it's just not who I am.
I'm the guy who likes Cordon Bleau with extra cheese & ham.
I've been a world-class trencherman, a man of substance you see?
Oysters, please, two dozen raw, now that's the stuff for me
I'd order such for an aperitif, just to warm me up,
to be followed by first fish, then fowl, before I sat to sup.
Now such a meal is disallowed, it's proscribed, altogether banned
in the morbidly unrealistic hope that I'll become fit and tanned.
I must walk on as if I don't see, the sign saying "All-you-can-eat"
and then savor the flavor of beans & rice just as if it were meat.
"Special Today" on Buffalo Wings; Champagne brunch at noon -
I gotta get off of this diet & I gotta get off it soon.
Why do people treat a belt-size like a strip of sacred cow?
I gotta get off this diet - and I gotta do it now
WAITRESS!