In a goldwhite tux for twenty summers
The dumb movies, the romance with Ava
His laughing Nancy puked a dark flavor
Though his chicken throat, his painted face. Comers
From brothels like hard vegas chips, white dust
Darkened the jazzy nights. You loved the rich
Crooks and thought murder was redemptive. A bitch
Who messed with Bugsy would get her bust
With the purple nipples carved into raw
Cow. Or love in your dry spitting music. Some
Black morning your thirsty blondes in the maw
Of that murderous electric city would come
Like snow in a glass hotel, their sweet South
An ivory orchid in your still-singing mouth.
Mastectomological Elegie
Jack Shugg tells me Brigette Bardot’s tits
Were cut off. Well, if that’s not the end
Of something, what is? The boys used to spend
A buck apiece to see some frog get his mitts
On the damn things. Some clods had the shits
Thinking about those big, big bazooms. I tend
To spew funereal verse about dead brains and send
The quatrains to quarterlies., Had I my wits
I would only pen elegies to breasts, bellies, rumps
And an occasional kidney. Could people steal
Her breasts? Where are they? No one dumps
An old pair of tits in the garbage. A meal
For cannibals? A nook in a museum? Now lumps
In a grave, the left breast lusts for one last feel.
