The Headless Man

mom was a radically insolvent

courtesan of the underpass camps

exploited by a grim and grimy past

reckless as the day is long

hosting a tourism so shameless

her own union set her on fire

to prevent further such mortifications

I advised her to talk to her real self

and got 5 blank staring minutes

basically because she didn't have one

only an extremely accurate echo

but she was a rebel and I loved her

kept her head lice population down

just so she could tell me the occasional

bedtime story on an empty stomach

hear now the legend of the Headless Man

once and a long ago

lived a lonely man with no head

one of the many stigmatized gentry

in the long forgotten social media uprising

somehow he could see hear and gesture

even though the neck was a pink nub

but he was hung like a meatloaf

making maidens titter at the village well

sighing rolling their eyes gasping flushed

um wait where was I

ah yes ... he fell in love

with the Bodiless Woman of course

knowing she could be of some use

it's a story of egregious assumptions

a belching sewer of lust and depravity

a juggernaut of rash sensual ambition

um wait where was I

ah right ... in the village below

the holy men were belled into a caucus

around Rowena’s oracle head

they came as the ancient test required

to run barefoot across the fire pit

at Detroit Jimmy's Bad to the Bone BBQ

the winner was a few inches shorter

from the igneous victory tap dance

a ritual purification of the sense of motion

accompanied by stigmatas and signs of wonder

Detroit Jimmy married Nub and Rowena

in a cabbage patch ceremony under the stars

wicked little boy went Row

on their wedding night mud bath

work me like your first bag of fries

invited Nub in a spasm of disorder

and they rode upstate in his Rocket 88

the road spreading gently

like a great pastry

 

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon