Momma Tried - Poetry - July 15 1978 - Journal

Momma warned Bobby Bebadd
'Bout married women
To save him the trouble
Of learning what prison can do__
But like Merle Haggard sang
He was 18, the cars fast, and the women faster
Sheila was 32, blonde, and long wanting__
Her husband the mayor of East Bum Fuck, Texas
His love the incumbent
Bobby Bebad the opposition
He a loser
Losers only win one way
Strictly in it for sex__
People say
You can't fight City Hall
All Bobby did
Sleep in its bed
Fuck there too
More than once a night several times each week for two months__
Discovered in the act
At the foot of the bed
The mayor
Gun in hand
52 old
Fat
The mayor of East Bumfuck Texas__
The 38
Loaded
Steady in hand
The mayor of East Bumfuck Texas
Trying to figure out
Who to shoot first
His wife or Bobby
The wife's 22 in the drawer
"Don't even think about it young man."
And he didn't__
Now Bobby Bebadd in the slammer
Of East Bumfuck Texas
Not too bad
With Sheila in the next cell
No one else in the jail
Just the two
And no steel bars stopping them
And Sheila saying more more more
Bobby Bebadd be bad
Momma tried
Momma tried
Momma tried to make him better
But to the bad he kept on turning__

Homage to Merle Haggard

Great cover from The Grateful Dead

This poem sucks. A warm up exercise, but too confusing, not to me but maybe others who don't think like this. Unsexed. Why do I think about it so much?

Later

At the Figaro Cafe on Bleeker Street Kim AKA Pudd, my CBGBs sister and fellow Gemini, says, "Immigrants are stealing all our jobs."

I work at an executive dining room as a way to for lunch serving executives. Everyone else on the floor is Latino. I am the only Yankee Irish in the place. None of my friends would stoop this low to make money, but it is my only job. No one else wants to hire me. Why? I don't know. Maybe because I think of sex too much. I had recently watched BREAD AND CHOCOLATE about an guest worker from Italy in Switzerland, who loses his work permit caught urinating in public. He counter the prejudice, he leads a clandestine life in Switzerland as a blonde Swiss.

It has never been an easy life for illegals and I answer Kim, "No, they aren't stealing jobs. They are our slaves. They took over the jobs from blacks and the Irish. Jobs none of us would do those jobs. Dishwashing, picking crops, all the non-union jobs. They are exile in a strange land and so am I."

Juan left Mexico in New York City
He kissed Rosita goodbye
Maybe their last kiss__
Train to the Border
Two days walking in the desert
A bus to New York
A job as a busboy in an exective dining room
For evil executives
No one speak English
The bosses like that
No one hears their secrets
Day after day one is treated like an animal
He screams inside
Rosita
I am an animal
Dogs eat better
I am an American Just not their American
Better I never came here
Better I never leave you,
Now I have to get ready
For mañana
Maybe one day I come back
Maybe one day I will be a waiter
Pero non Manana___