a headache is all i need to stay out,
to think clearly, the waters are up to you,
dinner is up to you, and yet you chose to shoot
the satellite tv dishes and you know how
the neighbors won't call the cops just shoot you back,
playback, swim against a tide of broken barley
relax and think about the time already spent
two years ago i got married in vegas and divorced
in little rock, but i was never good enough of a poet
to write a true cowboy song, no golden ring but
a miracle of a boob job, saline-fill
but cowboys these days are not what they used to be
and poets these days are all over the place
screwing the metrics, sparing the message, teaching
just causes unheard of, a rocky chain disgrace
and horror, moving in then moving out but always
lingering behind on a wheelchair:
elegance i presume is what lacks
here, the lightning, the nuts and bolts,
the preemptive wars, the make-up,
all shook up for the rest of the day,
there is no future and there is no justice,
but there's enough fake orange juice to feed
a whole planet and then fix a couple screwdrivers,
three ice cubes please, feeling so sorry,
landlocked and about to swim against all odds,
about to jump in boiling water, the saline-fill,
the sally fields of this neck with no woods,
the boiling river, the weather channel as oracle
for the time already spent, squandered
evan longhorn (Tulsa, OK, 1979)
