Madge - revised

[tectak]

I decided to repost this as the original had so many comments attached to it, it just seemed unwieldy. If that is incorrect I assume a mod and unrepost it.
--------------------------------------------------
Madge - version dos
version 2
------------------------------------------------
Hi Dale, I thought I'd leave this one until you were no longer able to get on-line. I often record programs I don't like on TV and play them back while I'm out. Here goes but I know I like it more already,
Best,
tectak

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road
and cars make a sticky noise as they pass by
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night...but not this line...though I just know that sound.
At the bus stop is a woman with
tumbleweed blown straw-blond hair,The blown is incongruous. Tumbleweed blown looks just like tumbleweed not blown...except it's in a different place. Don't go there.
lips painted like a freshly cut pink neon fig,I conceed. I have just cut open one of my own figs. Funny how some things you would not kiss but you would still eat.
and deep crevices carved in pasty skinThe problem is brit. We also have "A pa-stee". Cornish often, spelt pasty...which is why I suggested pastry. Pastry can have crevices, cracks and contours. Sorry....but remember Dick van Dyke?
from years of negligent living.

She reminds me of the Palmolive
dish-wash soap manicurist,This is jerky.That's all there is to say.
so I'm thinking her name might be
Madge...Not a name you hear much now.
That was from a time when if you were coolThat is what? Palmolive, soap, manicurist or Madge. Connect the dots.
you rolled your Lucky's up in the sleeve
of your tight white cotton shirt,
wielded a Zippo like a samurai sword,
and lit two, one for you and one for her.Like it

She has that look like she's done a year
or two in what they call jail these days.
Nothing like the jail on the
Andy Griffith Show where
Otis, the town drunk, slept it off
then let himself out the next morning.Peculiarly local, this line. Not like you at all. Limited audience appeal and all that. OK with me. I can imagine...that's what poetry should do, I guess
No one was letting Madge out
through those double vault doors
after her last bender, when she
smashed her fender into that street light.There's a whopping disconnect here. You are on a runaway bus powered by Premium Grade Assumption. She only looked LIKE she might have spent pen-time. You could firm up the prior line.
"She has the look that says she's done a year..."or something. Your poem


She's obviously on the way to work;"..her way", unless everyone goes the same way.
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform"ubiquitous" and "standard" seem a little additive. This whole line is oddly over-modified compared to "At the bus stop is a woman" ..."At the green and white local routes only aluminum scratched bus stop sign where the number twenty-seven, thirteen and fourty-one buses stop, except on Saturdays, stands a medium height woman in her early sixties...."
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias like Luby's where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
a thousand times a day,

“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin” *[b] Breathless. There must be a better way of saying ALL this...but still say it all

while serving their purgatory on earth,
but it's hard for a felon to get a job these days.I would (how I hate writing that) put a period after "earth" then drop the "and".

I can see through the heat distortion
swirling up from the earth
acting as a convection oven,Information overload. I got it all in the first line.
that she's firing up a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent of two hours of work.
Well, I guess you just find a way
when it is a matter of life and death! Yes. No butts.


©2013 -Erthona


* “hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”
help you, more tea, and come again.

------------------------------------------------------
original version

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road;
cars make a sticky noise as they pass by,
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night.
At the bus stop is a woman with
overly-processed straw blond hair,
lipsticked lips like a freshly cut neon fig,
and deep crevices in pasty skin.
It makes me think her name must be
something like “Madge”.

She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning.

She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”.

Through the visual heat distortion
swirling up from earth as convection oven
I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death!

©2013 -Erthona