Thursday, September 14, 2017

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 FBurke'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:

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