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and I had wild fist fights with each of

them

once or twice a week.

the fights lasted 3 or 4 hours and we came out

with

smashed noses, fattened lips, black eyes, sprained

wrists, bruised knuckles, purple

welts.

our parents said nothing, let us fight on and

on

watching disinterestedly and

finally going back to their newspapers

or their radios or their thwarted sex lives,

they only became angry if we tore or ruined our

clothing, and for that and only for that.

but Eugene and Frank and I

we had some good work-outs

we rumbled through the evenings, crashing through

hedges, fighting along the asphalt, over the

curbings and into strange front and backyards of

unknown homes, the dogs barking, the people screaming at

us.

we were

maniacal, we never quit until the call for supper

which none of us could afford to

miss.

anyhow, Eugene became a Commander in the

Navy and Frank became a Supreme Court Justice, State of

California and I fiddled with the

poem.

love poem to a stripper

50 years ago I watched the girls

shake it and strip

at The Burbank and The Follies

and it was very sad

and very dramatic

as the light turned from green to

purple to pink

and the music was loud and

vibrant,

now I sit here tonight

smoking and

listening to classical

music

but I still remember some of

their names: Darlene, Candy, Jeanette

and Rosalie.

Rosalie was the

best, she knew how,

and we twisted in our seats and

made sounds

as Rosalie brought magic

to the lonely

so long ago.

now Rosalie

either so very old or

so quiet under the

earth,

this is the pimple-faced

kid

who lied about his

age

just to watch

you.

you were good, Rosalie

in 1935,

good enough to remember

now

when the light is

yellow

and the nights are

slow.

my buddy

for a 21-year-old boy in New Orleans I wasn’t worth

much: I had a dark small room that smelled of

piss and death

yet I just wanted to stay in there, and there were

two lively girls down at the end of the hall who

kept knocking on my door and yelling, “Get up!

There are good things out here!”

“Go away,” I told them, but that only goaded

them on, they left notes under my door and

scotch-taped flowers to the

doorknob.

I was on cheap wine and green beer and

dementia…

I got to know the old guy in the next

room, somehow I felt old like

him; his feet and ankles were swollen and he couldn’t

lace his shoes.

each day about one p.m. we went for a walk

together and it was a very slow

walk: each step was painful for

him.

as we came to the curbing I helped him

up and down

gripping him by an elbow

and the back of his

belt, we made it.

I liked him: he never questioned me about

what I was or wasn’t

doing.

he should have been my father, and I liked

best what he said over and

over: “Nothing is worth

it.”

he was a

sage.

those young girls should have

left him the

notes and the

flowers.

Jon Edgar Webb

I had a lyric poem period down in New Orleans, pounding

out these fat rolling lines and

drinking gallons of beer.

it felt good like screaming in a madhouse, the madhouse of

my world

as the mice scattered among the

empties.

at times I went into the bars

but I couldn’t work it out with those people who sat on the

stools:

men evaded me and the women were terrified of

me.

bartenders asked that I

leave.

I did, struggling back with wondrous six-packs

to the room and the mice and those fat rolling

lines.

that lyric poem period was a raving bitch of a

time

and there was an editor right around the

corner who

fed each page into a waiting press, rejecting

nothing

even though I was unknown

he printed me upon ravenous paper

manufactured to last

2,000 years.

this editor who was also the publisher and

the printer

kept a straight face as I handed him the ten to

twenty pages

each morning:

“is that all?”

that crazy son of a bitch, he was a lyric

poem

himself.

thank you

some want me to go on writing about whores

and puking.

others say that type of thing disgusts

them.

well, I don’t miss the

whores

although