Embrace my Manlinessor
Meditations on the Historical and Cultural Impact of a 300-lb. Lawyer Impersonating Elvis in a Centerville, Utah, Grocery Store Parking Lot (at night).
As Randall shakes his can to Presley's beat,
The local passing patrons pause and stare,
"That hunk 'o burnin' love has happy feet!"
He felt the evening dull and incomplete,
Too tepid, boring and in need of flare,
So Randall shook his bum to Presley's beat.
The public opportunity so sweet,
He parked his van, stepped out, and with great care
His hunk 'o burnin' love found happy feet.
How grand a sight to residents so beaten,
By life's routine conformity--then, there!
Some fat man shakes his can to Presley's beat!
What luck that on the radio that evening,
King Elvis prophesied through summer air,
His song of burnin' love for happy feet
A Knight that night, Sir Randall saved us sheep
And though he's in the desert somewhere,
Still Randall shakes his can to Presley's beat,
a hunk 'o burnin' love with healing feet.
---
79th Street ReflectionPedaling along 79th street at hyper speed
Evening hangs a heavy drape
On another day of preaching.
We ride for the local outpost
A two-flat
Stinking of Rottweiler
And old wood
Below me-
chrome-alloy steel
Mummy-wrapped in black slashed rubber tubing
And electrical tape
A mechanical marvel of gears and spokes and fiber cords
Affectionately dubbed Thunderlips
Renders the road a swift-speckled streak.
Tenement complexes stare from their broken window eyes
As I ride past
the red brick monuments of Chicago's south side
The dull throb of the streetlight looms quietly
Above the road's
elaborate web of black tarred Band-Aids
Behind me
The illustrious Elder Clark
Labors
On a rag-tag mess of a bicycle
Hybridized from two bikes
A Desoto
And a roll of duct tape
Poor cat, he'll be
hit by three cars in three months
We duck debris of the disenfranchised
passing unharmed through their gauntlet of
Bottles
Bricks
And fists,
Not to mention our share of "kill whitey!" threats.
"Let's get them Honkeys on they bikes!"
Public Access Radio
As we make for the shelter
Of 60th and Talman.
Yet I smile as we cross Halsted
And Farrakhan's headquarters sitting there
Cool and quiet in the summer night
A million-man march
And a million recorded speeches
Yours for only $9.95 apiece
It's a long way back to Bountiful
But it may as well be on the moon
Suburbia is a distant dream
Populated with the pens that write me letters
That tell me of happenings at home
Yet as I fly along that south Chicago street
I am haunted by familiarity
I am institutionalized
I am home
