October 7, 2016 Poetry
Red Teeth
Left work early to meet delivery peeps at my building. 100 weeks ago we ordered a couch. Tell ya, I've never seen two guys more pissed off to have to deliver a couch. It was like they weren't delivery guys at all. They'd just been normal people walking down the street when someone stepped out of a doorway with a shotgun and said, "Deliver this couch between 11 and 3 or I'll shoot your family." Reluctantly these guys climbed in the box truck and sped in my direction with this goddamn couch that is gonna get their children slaughtered. Here I am, at the apartment, obliviously eating a cherry ice pop, going, "What's up dudes!" But lives are on the line. My couch has derailed the existence of everyone they know. There's not a fraction of a second to spare. Anyways, super nice couch. Comfy. Gray sectional. The delivery guys put it parallel with the paradise window. Perfecto. My wife can lay on one end, watch Harry Potter. I can lay on the other end, watch Rambo 7. We're all thrilled with our spot to sit and conquer perfect nothing. Without a tip, the delivery guys sprint out of the house, back into the gravity of their own orbits. Their cousins, girlfriends, sisters, dogs, mothers, cats—all shall survive. A hush falls over apartment 1B. I have just spilled cherry slush all over this beautiful new cushion. And so now I am flipping the cushion.
Do Ya Wanna Dance?
fire laws have made it so less of us will die because of and for rock n roll
instead of explosions, someone put on the white noise machine and now everyone is painting their faces on the crooked picket slats
doesn't it make you want to be eaten alive when Stevie Nicks talks about thunder and lightning and fucking everyone else in the band
this is a blues riff in B minor, watch me for the changes and try to keep up with appropriation
our band would be called the Mere Mortals and we could even be killed by dust or a malfunctioning traffic light, or even growing old and accomplishing nothing despite this muddy wealth of fat fruit lying in the low belly of this concave floor
a cover band takes the stage and we all realize by the third song and the sixth beer that they don't know any of the chords or words and that they're not here to entertain us, they are here to destroy our evening
tell me, does he like your brand new leopard skin pill box hat that you acquired from leeching a couple hundred years of roots music, spanning seas, continents, customs, etc.?
hello, I have been sent from the future to rap battle you, so brace yourself and your stupid fiddle
a life is just a single day but that single day extended out exponentially into an endless European dance mix, witness the copious sampled police sirens, random horns and kick drum mimicking the human heart lost in the dust of the average day, witness it for the same day over and over again until you beg the song to stop
if you can find the beat clap along, if you can't find the beat dig a hole into the earth and hide because no matter what we do the rhythm is gonna get us and the only way to possibly survive the rhythm is to reimagine what music is and what music means to our uncoordinated molecules bumping into every wet cell wall
The Beatles come on and a brand new 14 year old says, "What the FUCK is this?!"
Mom says, "Ha, you should have seen this place 10 years ago."
Dad says, "Ha, ha, you should have seen the place twenty years ago that inspired the place that was cool ten years ago."
Meanwhile The Native Americans are still pounding on their war drums and the pounding says "Ha, you should have seen this place ten years before you got here. 1482, so sexy, so sexy it was ..."
on the radio, a conservative talk show host starts to moan and a tired girl slaps the radio dial as a reflex and as a reflex the radio finds Beyonce, so the radio can survive, all this happens in a car parked underneath the train bridge, shaking as the train passes
somewhere else, in a lonely room, the radio is also on and a very sick boy wheezes, do you wanna dance under the moonlight?
do ya do ya do ya wanna dance?
every once in a while a plane crashes into the side of mountain and kills a new batch of 27 year old geniuses, but never mind that, we're appeasing the shimmy shake gods, shimmy shimmy
as the baby comes out from the momma, the nurse pushes the button to start The Imperial Death March, and it's funny, it really is, because it starts from second one
the human heart is not a lead guitar, and for shame, it never forgets that.
Bud Smith is the author of F250, Calm Face, and Dustbunny City, among others. He works heavy construction in NJ.
image: Tammy Mercure
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