by Bud Smith
I've never shot a gun before
but I want to.
Can't you hate your family?
Can't you live near a water tower with a spelling error?
Please stand out on the lawn with a lemon lime hula hoop,
violet ribbons in your hair and a Sunday dress on.
I wanna drive up in a rusted out car I found by the reservoir,
my white t-shirt, my blue jeans.
I'd like to tell your father and your mother
that you're coming with me.
Black velvet Elvis on the wall on a cross,
your Italian mineral oil rain lamps leaking by the birdcage.
I'd like them to say "no"
It'd be nice, the air sucked out of the room,
when I said "yes."
I'd like to shoot them all
Leave their bodies at the kitchen table,
plates of gravy, hand made spaghetti.
Then me and you could roll slow
through wheat fields and strange farms,
"look at that cow!"
"that's a horse."
"Same difference"
West then south. Kansas then Texas.
I'd teach you how to drive manual,
you'd piant your toenails dayglo,
bobbing out the passenger side window.
We'd buy new fuzzy rest stop dice,
those trees that smell like Christmas
dangling off the glovebox.
You'd say you loved me,
we'd sleep beneath the out of range flash bulb stars
far away from the am/fm radio towers
and the influence of the Eat at Peggy Sue Diner billboards.
I'd kill a gas attendant in Playa Del Mar.
You'd read stained romance novels in motel rooms,
while I oiled the gun and laughed on the phone, to no one.
Your brother would catch us in California, Laguna beach,
riding his motorcycle all night, thinking his life was a movie.
I'd like that. I'd gun him down from the roof of the Von's supermarket,
you'd clap, watching him fall over in the only empty parking spot.
"Oh, it feels so real"
We'd eat the barely blemished fruit that you hid up your skirt
vote Pacific coast, all the ghosts stuffed into the trunk.
"Well, all you have to do is keep abandoning cars."
"Can't hit a moving target, sweetie."
You'd just smirk and toss me grapes
I'd catch them in mid-air like an estranged circus seal
Most of all, I want romance
I wanna guide you through the silver streets
I wanna make a house in a Sequoia
1,000 feet off the muddy ground
I wanna set bear traps and make tiger pits
with sharpened wooden spikes hidden beneath the leaves.
In feverish worried dreams, all you can do is extend fires
and riot on anybody who comes between.
Ahhh, In the middle of the wilderness
pretend it's funny when I pick up a pinecone
to order you a pepperoni pizza with mushrooms and onions
kiss me so deep I almost die
"Let's start a new life in Alaska."
Leave in the fog. Dime store sunglasses,
and a root beer soda in Portland, Oregon.
Be recognized for your sins, eating a soft cone
outside the Tasty Freeze.
Be forever cool and polite,
when the dipshit cops arrive
short and star struck, multiplying like bunnies
to drag me off. Offer them gum.
And you: don't scream
don't send me beautiful handwritten letters
don't kiss the envelope with fire engine red lip stick
don't come to my execution
just remember what we had in the Grand Canyon
that I'm not gonna disclose here
cause, people talk
and I'd like our love to be private
despite the myth around it
that everybody thinks is their own
13
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Murder spree poetry. I thought I knew what was happening in Kansas... Was sure by the time you hit Peggy Sue’s in Barstow. Great trip.
Unsettlingly funny and magical mythical tour.
Interesting... cinematic, even.
Can't you hate your family? /
Can't you live near a water tower with a spelling error?
I love those lines!
Nice. I like the images that punctuate the narrative of this couple. The wild dreams and ideas and the final "despite the myth around it/that everybody thinks is their own" that brings it halfway between reality and adventure.
This is one helluva something I can't call it, or define. I only know I loved it. Fave.
Episodic, wonderful work. Thanks for sharing it*
A poem with pictures and a motivational tension just underneath. "I'd kill a gas attendant in Playa Del Mar." I believe it!
Absolutely amazing, one of the best I have read.
A cactus of a poem whose exterior is forbidding but whose inside is sweet.
"Most of all, I want romance"...
"Let's start a new life in Alaska"...
"I'd like our love to be private"...
A really epic, almost mythic journey, like Bonnie and Clyde, only more idiosyncratic and personal. Very nice writing so many powerful images -
"the barely blemished fruit that you hid up your skirt"
"'Oh, it feels so real'" (wow, so meta!)
"kiss me so deep I almost die"
...
I like this. Despite the guns. *
Thanks everybody. Appreciate the notes. Mucho gracias.
Unsettling, amazing, definitely not boring. I couldn't stop reading and isn't that what it's all about?
Nice work. I like. *
I picture Juliet Lewis as the female protagonist but can't decide between Brad Pitt or Woody Harrelson for the shooter...*