I always struggle with the prompts Billy. You've turned something comic into something very cool here. Especially with these lines:
His hobby is stupidity without compromise.
He inspires me to giddy heights with his love
of life, danger and that frightful thing called family.
What a way to turn a character study into something personal "this frightful thing called family" is telling--a great closing line.
Best,
Todd
The Great Jimmy Hoffa Scavenger Hunt
What you’ve been told is an urban fable.
His voice still ghosts as angry static
over the twisted
pair of copper phone lines. You only see
an empty Green Pontiac,
an open driver’s door.
Yet, the steel drums remain full
of possibility, rusting
sentinels in Jersey City landfills. You imagine
Giant’s Stadium could frame his bones
as if he cared for childish pursuits
played by that pussy Bobby Kennedy.
We do not see his tears
bleed from statues,
or his face form in a clump
of mashed potatoes, and mistake him
for Abraham Lincoln, or Jesus,
or David Cassidy—as if any of them ascended
from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox.
This is no skin-scraping, finger-bone divining séance.
There is no tap we wait to hear.
If you must look to the dead for guidance,
ask Mary Jo, the drowned girl,
to write her prophecy in the grease
trap drippings scrawling with her
limp fingers:
That which is dead
will not remain so.
That which is buried
will rise.
His hobby is stupidity without compromise.
He inspires me to giddy heights with his love
of life, danger and that frightful thing called family.
What a way to turn a character study into something personal "this frightful thing called family" is telling--a great closing line.
Best,
Todd
The Great Jimmy Hoffa Scavenger Hunt
What you’ve been told is an urban fable.
His voice still ghosts as angry static
over the twisted
pair of copper phone lines. You only see
an empty Green Pontiac,
an open driver’s door.
Yet, the steel drums remain full
of possibility, rusting
sentinels in Jersey City landfills. You imagine
Giant’s Stadium could frame his bones
as if he cared for childish pursuits
played by that pussy Bobby Kennedy.
We do not see his tears
bleed from statues,
or his face form in a clump
of mashed potatoes, and mistake him
for Abraham Lincoln, or Jesus,
or David Cassidy—as if any of them ascended
from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox.
This is no skin-scraping, finger-bone divining séance.
There is no tap we wait to hear.
If you must look to the dead for guidance,
ask Mary Jo, the drowned girl,
to write her prophecy in the grease
trap drippings scrawling with her
limp fingers:
That which is dead
will not remain so.
That which is buried
will rise.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson