Welcome to Wayne F. Burke

Tonight I am changing things up with Wayne F. Burke and his poems.  He, too, is a poet from Resurrection of a Sunflower.  I hope that you are enjoying these poems by participants in Catfish McDaris and Dr. Marc Pietryzkowski's anthology.  Perhaps they will encourage you to buy the anthology!

bathroom

I told the girl

sitting beside me

on the bus

that I had to use the bathroom

and as I stood

she said "no thanks"

which

I thought odd,

and as I leaned against the bathroom wall

and pissed down the metal hole

as the bus swayed back & forth,

I realized that she had thought

I had asked her to come with me

to the toilet,

something I had not considered,

ever,

even though

I had been feeling her tits since Denver...

Who or what did she think I was?

Not much, I guessed.

I got off the bus at the station in Rawlins

without asking her name or number.

Max

I got a room in the YWCA

which was immeasurably better than

sleeping outside

on a bench in the park

although the Y was not without problems;

there were roaches who

came out at night

and ran across my face

I tried to sleep with my mouth closed

but woke one night

after a tickling in my throat

and swallowed one

and the roach started to walk around

inside of me

I could feel it

and would punch myself in the belly

and people probably thought me funny

but I never could kill it and

finally

I went to see a doctor

and was given some pills

I took but then

stopped taking after I over-heard some trees

talking about me

I drank some Clorox

to kill the roach

but only made myself ill

and I went to the hospital

and had my stomach pumped

(I hate that)

and still the roach

I could feel it kicking

growing bigger

and I decided to cut it out

and bought a knife

for twenty dollars

but before I cut

the thing came out

suddenly

a healthy seven-pound

boy

with little roach face

and two cute tiny antennae.

Suspect

I returned to the apartment

at midnight

after the last shift of

my work week

and got out

of the car

my sore legs and feet

and the little Shit-Sue dog

upstairs

started to bark from the window

and I bent

picked-up a rock

and threw it

and heard the window glass

crack

and shards fall 

with a sound like chimes

and I ran

around the house,

climbed the stairs to my place

and sat

in the dark,

and listened to excited voices

next door

and watched for cops

who never came,

and when the voices calmed

I went to bed

but just as I started to fall

asleep

that damn dog

began barking

again.

Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been published in a variety of magazines, online and in print. His four published poetry collections, all from Bareback Press, are WORDS THAT BURN, DICKHEAD, KNUCKLE SANDWICHES, and A LARK UP THE NOSE OF TIME. He lives, or tries to anyway, in the central Vermont area.

I don't remember if I've posted anything by Jack Walrath.  The title of this song, "Napoleon Blown Apart," is worth including: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODA2QnvnNsY

Charles Mingus recorded Walrath's "Black Bats and Poles": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wquzmoADROE

Here is Walrath's version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," the one video from his Master of Suspense CD:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSyJl5gY--o

I'll finish with a live version of "Suzy's Knees": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJLEqnAh9Zc: