Creative Writing
Creative Writing
Covid Day Women #16 and #20
a nod (and a wink) to Dylan
by John Hawkins
Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re trying to be so lewd
They’ll stone ya just a-like they said they would
They’ll stone ya when you’re grabbing pussy moan
Then they’ll stone ya when you’re down there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Pencey, Pompey, pass the friggin bone
Well, they’ll stone ya for your Putin horsey porn
They’ll stone ya coz you’re silver spoony born
They’ll stone ya when you’re stompin’ on the law
They’ll stone ya when you calling Liz a squaw
But I would not feel so all alone
Amy, Pencey, pass the freakin bone
They’ll stone ya when you call Barry’s birth a fable
They’ll stone ya when your hands are under table
They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to make a buck
They’ll stone ya and then they’ll say, “Fell off the truck”
Tell ya what, I would not feel so all alone
Barrsy, Amy, pass the bleepin bone
Well, they’ll stone ya and say that it’s the end
Then they’ll stone ya and then they’ll come back again
They’ll stone ya when you see your face at Rushmore
They’ll stone ya when you’re eyes go on a tush tour
Yes, but I would not feel so all alone
Gina, Barrsy, pass the righteous bone
Well, they’ll stone ya when you break it off with Xi
They’ll stone ya when you end Détent-étente-a-tee
They’ll stone ya and then say that you’re not brave
They’ll stone ya and then they’ll do the Wave
But I would not feel so all alone
Betsy, Gina, pass the mother bone
Well, they’ll stone ya for fumblin’ the Carona
They’ll stone ya for your integumentary toner
They’ll stone ya coz you don’t think Black Lives Matter
They’ll stone ya when your rich friends eat and scatter
Yet I would not feel so all alone
Pencey, Betsy, pass the buzzy bone
Well, we’re passing out the pocket Wagner tubas
electric Bob kazoos and German lugers
Democracy’s gone all bunker mental
Cause ‘ceptionalism’s lost its flashy dental
I would not feel so all alone
Even Roger Roger must get Stoned
Alright! (begins to fade, like a marching band already passed)
05/28/20 George Floyd protests in Minneapolis. NYTimes.
By John Kendall Hawkins
The riot squad is restless
They need somewhere to go
-
- Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row”
Derek the chauvinist piggy
Up to his knee in neck
All coz George wanted a ciggy
And paid for a pack with dreck
Repeat: I can’t breathe, he said
I can’t breathe: sixteen times
a mindfulness exercise gone code red
Derek up to his neck in crimes
Lawdy, why, just yesterday it seems
We were modelling new Covid kerchiefs
On blue screen catwalks, zoom-zoom streams
Buffer zone fantasies, locked in like thieves
And now twin cities tumbling
Miniapnea–too much St. Pauli’s, girl
An empire’s nasty stumble bumbling
Riot squads ready, batons a-twirl
Arrests in 140 cities
Like characters allowed in tweets
Dusting off our rage and protest ditties
Bringing isolations to the streets
Whoa, what’s that cop there doin’?
Rubber bullets, tears and stuns
Hey look! Harmon Killibrewin’!
Beating the snot outta Rod Carew’s sons
Two police cruisers accelerated — zoooooom —
And disappeared through time
Other fascists used a sonic gun — boooooom —
And protesting brains turned to slime
Then, inexplicably, GW Bush
Was asked for his take on events
And all hell broke loose
When he said all you need is love
Love is all you need
Twin cities falling
Goodyear drones overhead
Call 9-1-1, someone’s calling
Freedom’s just another word for the walking talking dead
Hep two three four, laughin’
Cuz I’m thinkin’ Bill Murray
And that egg beater scene
(Why, what’d you think I was thinking of?)
Cops firing point blank paint
At the people who ain’t
Joe Biden people
Like fascist machinegunning pointilists
angry at the canvas for being blank
Or being at all
Thugs, tweets Trump
And Cepi agrees
When he sees
America with Kurds disease
Trump holding a bible:
Face all Wrath of Con
More hot air than a balloon
should have to don
The veiled threat of violence
In the corona age
A headline reads
In the the Democracy Dies in Darkness Daily
Cops charged with excessive force
Like Kathy Scruggs charged with excessive journalism
Both sponsored by the voice of god
Deus ex machinas outta control everywhere
Someone call the cops
Po-lice
Po
Lice
Po people
Licentious
License to kill
We don’t need no stinking badge
Predators overhead
Feminist patrols of local women
Foxy femme fatales
Like Sirens from Smith College
(I remember well)
Enforcing curfews
Godivas with batons
Pestlemortarin’ their palms
Knees on the necks of creeping Toms
No happy ending for Nicholson this time
Light them up, one cop said
And thus began, the Boston Massacre
Crispus Attucks, a freed slave
(did you see what they did there?)
Paul Revere rode all day and all night
To warn about the black and white
And then, when the craze was over
Settled back in with his favorite nightmare
Chicago ‘68: The Love we loved to hate
Remember how in school
A private one, of course
We limned the world’s end
and had to choose between
Archibald McCleish, TS Eliot, WB Yeats
Compare and contrast
Circus crash or whimper bang or falcon-masked women
Who won’t listen
Justice in a Just Is world
Curfews in cities coast to coast
Curlews in ditties ghost to ghost
All you kneed is love
Love is all you kneed
All You Need Is Zinc and Copper
by John Kendall Hawkins
We’re already over it
Post-pandemic parties are being planned
Zoom weddings are now needing consommé
Mirepoix, strains, olios
Stacked up like Warhol zoomcampbells
Twiggy Styx
Live stream breakout Dionysian orgies
To eye-pop the poncey Apollonians
And there’s this guy
Down Madagascar way
Selling madcap elixirs
Artemisia annua to deal
With pestilential effluviums
Artemis of Ephesus
Who putschy Germans in beerhalls
Later dubbed Lady Liebfraumilch
Babylon Berlin, right? Many taps open
Juice of wormwood, absinthium
Victoria’s Secret Dreams
Erin go bra-less
And here we are
Weeeee
And speaking of magical elixirs
The hoaxer in the house white now
Who we fear has infectious baboonic plague
Double downs closetrussianqueen
He says, to ward off Elvirus
Calling him morbidly obese
Or was it morbidly obtuse
(Our collective future morbidly, o, bleak)
He might just drop dead
Which would save us all that
Hypocritical handwringing
Should some Lefty pop him in the head
And he smirks up
Holding the pristine magic lead
And saying the hoax is on you
I was reading the other day
And every day’s the other day for me
That crazy Isaac Newton
Steeped in gravity and alchemy lead
Dropped not just apples, but heads
As Master of the Royal Mint
Drawing and quartering
Folks who metaled with the coin of the realm
(Heads would be a-rolling today)
And once wrote cryptically in his diary
‘Punching my sister’
And longed to beat the snot out of Leibniz
But, then, who didn’t?
All I know is
Where’s Ted Koppel’s nightline
When you need it to dignify
To count the days
We’ve been held hostage
By TV news and Dr. Bright
And Sisyphean dimwits
From Densa, the foothill village at IQ Hill
All as cover for something worse
Than Iran-contra and North’s
Alfred E. Neuman smile?
Lately
I’ve had a williams hankering
To dial 9-1-1
Cause everything seems to be falling
Freely all around in its own footprints
And I’m beginning to see sex scenes
Sublime and subliminal
In my G and T ice cubes
Corona morphing into bin Laden
And feeling ostrichsized with no one to emulate
It all makes my head spin actually
Right off its axis
Like The King of the Bingo Game
But the doggone river was dry
Can’t wait for the HBO series
Meet Joe Black
by John Kendall Hawkins
Today lookin’ like Death warmed over
Foolish as Brad Pitt just sayin’
arrivederci
His jiffy do gone
Replaced with a ‘fro
He recounts how he done Corn Pop
A bad dude needing welfare reform
Poolside all those white years ago
When push came to shove
Back in days he was good buds
With folk who exchanged
strange fruit trading cards
And called each other Bubba
Meet Joe Black
The great white hope now
Up ‘gainst that colored harlequin
In the white house
If only Joe hadn’t Coleman Silked
A human stain in his pants
A mea culpa spook
Rattling his closeted skeletons
Just a dog-faced lying pony soldier
Too small to fail
Like a shape-shifting monster virus
Politician one step below molester,
As Woody Allen would say
(Underwear have term limits
Why not politicians: take a memo:
Compare track records, and skid rows)
And the only thing is
biden Joe did wrong
Is he done went ‘head and stayed
in Mississippi a day too long,
As Bobby Dylan would say.
Meet Joe White
Sloppy slap happy Joe
We done scraped da bottom da barrel
American Vegemite
(And the Aussies don’t even know)
superduper did another roperdoper
Up against the wall, he dropped the quine
Like hippies dropped El Cid to change their minds
And yesterday someone compared trump to hitler
who when his vases were panned
(apparently, it’s not so cool
if a rose is not a rose is not a rose)
ripped apart his brushes in a
Mein kampf kristallnacht bulldozer rage
Dancing like sugar plumbed fairies in his head
And painted them under his nose
And then good germans showed up, unopposed
Buttrump
We’re talking vases of finger flowers in bloom
Nuremberg, Leni W. as Shalott at the history loom
And Richie Rich broken bad
shirty brownnosers sieg heiling
Henry Kissinger American Express
Is that really an image we want?
Don’t leave home without it
because there’s a virus
Meet the Two Joes
States of red and blue
rock em sock em robo-pols
one flew east one flew west
And someone each of them knew
flew to New York to invest
Wall Street rallies don’t need
Triumphs of the will
Democracy will do
The red pill or the blue bill
choose your poison, flagly
(Socrates said fuck it give me the hemlock)
Well, someone said, maybe Elvirus,
that it ain’t over til
the morbidly obese fat fuck sings
And this could end falsetto
A quarantino ending for the ages
We all fall down
Inglorious basterds (sic, real sic)
Watching our dreams go up in flames
Let’s see what the mourning brings
by John K. Hawkins
I like to think of Corona
as Paul Revere’s bugle,
laughing at us as, a fugal
reminder of what we choose to ignore
at our peril. Imagine, if you will,
Climate Change as a virus
we wake up to like meerkats, as one,
alert, ready, filled with protocols,
the Press on it, every story angled,
the world in kumbaya lock-down,
each of us quarantined against each other,
in self-isolation, mobilized
to be immobile, pretty much
like any other day, but now
the message is the massage,
and, if you thought about it,
we are keened to defend our turf.
I like to think of Corona
as a collective unconscious archetype
come roaring to life like
the Notre Dame forest fire with no insurance,
the gold-dipped crown of thorns rescued by the 1%,
and bringing clarity everywhere,
and when you think about it, if you do,
we’re blessed hosts to a thousand viruses, and
bacteria up the yin-yang,
eaten alive by time in a kind of trans
-substantiation and -migration
of cellular souls, always
in circulation, please, sir,
I want some more.
I like to think of Corona
as a terrestrial soul,
which is more than you can say for us,
if science is right and
we came from outer space, giant
viruses ourselves, kick-starting evolution,
neither alive nor not-alive catalysts
for membranes, and our brains, too,
science says, are viral emanations —
frisson je nais se quoi
lit-up Gauloisse-smoking jellyfish
that have no real place on Earth,
(or Paris for that matter)
and Corona knows it.
I like to think of Corona
when I watch old films like The Blob
that warn us of something —
herpes, Reds, the aliens in us all;
and The Andromeda Strain, where science says
humans are skid marks in the skivvies of the cosmos, and
The Matrix, where Agent Smith calls us out,
and the Twilight Zone “Cookbook” episode. It’s not like
we didn’t have fair warning,
as Corona established her dominion
like a virus within a virus
and wiped that smirk away
from the pussy-grabber’s face.
All the Presidents’ Miens
All I know is
we face an up and coming
always up and coming
electoral battle in the fall
between, always between,
pussygrabbers to the Left
and pussygrabbers to the Right,
two guys stroking,
littoral and clitoral,
you choose the prez, and
keep your hand on that ballot,
hold on. Oh, Lord, hold on.
Joe Jiffy Pop
who once had people coming
for miles around to pick
his plagiarized brains,
and who was biding his time,
hunting eggs in his mind
in the ovary office (I mean oval),
seeing himself as the Easter bunny president,
after voters conspired
against Bernie again (apparently,
his fingers, too, have done some walking
through the yellow pages,
a wolf wearing soul-of-satire clothing),
must now read his own palm
to remember where it’s been,
so he doesn’t have to lose
to a glad-handing clown only good
for tossing out toilet paper rolls to the plebs.
Twas ever thus:
Men and power at the one and many river
pronouncing themselves Hairyclitorises,
changing their views by the day.
The hand of GHW, our beloved CIA president,
was known to go covert and gitmo a gal or two;
even wheelchaired up he was frisky
and known to goose the geese.
GW might have been the exception
onnacounta he still had the gloves on,
but then again he was a Top Gun
in his own mind, on Cruise control,
born a mission accomplished.
If Obama was anything like Jesse Jackson —
just saying: and later the drone fantasies,
the double taps, their connotations.
There was always someone it seems
playing “Little Willie Leaps”
on Clinton’s sexaphone, him wearing sunnies, natch.
While the allies were dropping bombs,
Reagan was dropping Lana Turners onto tables
in Hollywood, Jack Nicholson style,
While John Garfield rolled over in his grave.
And JFK’s rumored magic bullet theory:
that until you’ve had them three ways,
you never knew a grassy knoll.
L-BJ. N’est ce pas? Capeesh.
Even George the wig-clad cut down cherries
and not only didn’t he lie about it
but frankly seemed to boast.
Our best bet was the penis farmer
(I mean, peanut)
Who turned himself in
(Democrats, right?)
after a self-investigation
that nobody asked for — Internal Affairs,
aka, lust in the heart,
the scandal exposed right there
in Playboy magazine:
You have a flash of Jimmy in the mansion
and then pray you’ll go blind
as if you saw Carter, not Godiva,
riding high on a heaving horse.
And I mean high.
You have to hand it to Richard Gere
he says (wait for it)
most power’s under the table:
A flick of tongue, a quick handshake
and a hoarse whisper-er-er
of reassurance
to seal the deal
(note the wife’s eyes).
Ah, love, let us be true,
give me your hand
(so I can see it)
and let’s stay inside forever
and never grow up, and pretend —
Covid-19 long, long gone,
but here anyway,
just checking each other out
safely forever distant
like dream people, wisps really:
engagements, weddings, sex romps, threats, funerals, all on line —
each of us wondering
who’s zoomin who
today.
Followed of course by the requisite ad
that mixes beer and contenders,
the way Eliot mixed memory and desire:
Dos Ickies, the Mexican says,
Stay thirsty my friends,
and don’t forget to vote
the lesser of two evils — fun,
like at the end of Animal Farm.
Remember how much fun we had,
looking left to right and back again,
trying to figure out who was who?
Smithsonian mag
the other day gleed
and glissed over copper,
the age old assassin,
djinn killer of germs,
free radicals that beat out
Corona’s membranes,
like some obscure french revolution,
hooded guillotines and copperheads,
a fresh roll of coins,
¡Viva la Revolución!
A penny saved is a saving penny!
E pluribus unum, from many, one percent;
empty the coin can,
leave the upper coins,
grind the copper down
and sprinkle it liberally, radically
over your cocoa pops, and mangia
your copper blues away.
Go back to the busker,
now masked, buy back
the Lincolns you once dropped
like turds in his case, while
he strummed his soul out,
“Penny For Your Thoughts”;
exchange Lincolns, give him paper,
full of germs, that money, but it’s a risk
you take, when you take away his copper.
“Teen” vandals are stealing back copper
from junk yards they sold them wires to —
hoods, sly eyes and tattoos,
feeding dobermans their opioids,
(if they have to), there’s a silver lining,
and they think re-sell, hit the market,
copper stocks have stalled —
buy, motherfucker, buy —
And run, coz the ‘oids didn’t work.
Maybe what’s left of the Left
should gather on Liberty Island
(if you still carry a torch for the old girl)
and reach out and touch her
(but not there, as Trump would do)
like the apes going apeshit
around the monolith in 2001.
Or, maybe, tear her down
for lifesaving keychains,
like we did the Wall in triumph,
back in the summer or was it ‘89?
I’m calling for the government —
any government will do —
to mint 400 million pennies
and to offer them up to gun holders,
a Lincoln for each gun freed,
Covid-19 and gun control in one,
Or, at least hand out copper bullets,
So those they shoot don’t get ‘rona.
It’s the humanest thing we can do.
And, goddamn it, if
you get real desperate, man,
run up to any policeman — well, okay,
walk up nonchalantly, g’day,
and give him a long loving bear hug,
and don’t, no matter how hard he clubs you,
let go of that lifesaving copper.
Sung to the tune of Bobby Dylan’s “Corrina, Corrina”
Corona, Corona
I been thinking bout you
Corona, Corona
You thinkin bout me, too?
Donkeys, poultry, camel, foxes
Just left in nine assorted boxes
Flown round the world
I got a bird flu whistles
Got a bird flu sings
I got a bird flu whistles
Got a bird flu sings
But I ain’t yet got Corona
Death don’t mean a thing
(bluesy mouth harp riff)
Corona, Corona
Got me double bind
Corona, Corona
Got me testing blind
O, I just can’t believe the data
Hmm, I might just lose my mind
Corona, Corona
I been thinking bout you
Corona, Corona
You thinkin bout me, too?
Hazmat badgers, hedgehogs and rats
Mice so squirr’ly, they were chasing cats
Flown round the world
I got a bird flu whistles
Got a bird flu sings
I got a bird flu whistles
Got a bird flu sings
But I ain’t yet got Corona
Death don’t mean a thing
(bluesy mouth harp riff)
Corona, Corona
Got me double bind
Corona, Corona
Got me testing blind
O, I just can’t believe the data
Hmm, I might just lose my mind
Corona, Corona
I been thinking bout you
Corona, Corona
You thinkin bout me, too?
You’ve cancelled ball games, travel’n too
Now just please cancel the Election
That’d be something (ooh)
I got a bird flu whistles
Got a bird flu sings
I got a bird flu whistles
Got a bird flu sings
But I ain’t yet got Corona
Death don’t mean a thing
(bluesy mouth harp riff)
Corona, Corona
Got me double bind
Corona, Corona
Got me testing blind
O, I just can’t believe the data
Hmm, I might just lose my mind
Just can’t believe the data
Corona, might just lose my mind
(repeat, extended bluesy mouth harp riff)
By John Kendall Hawkins
…[M]en should be treated in such a way that there’s no fear of their seeking revenge…
-Nicolai Machiavelli, “Mixed Principalities,” The Prince
“You come at the king, you bess not miss.”
– Omar, The Wire
Donald Trump sat with Recep “Cepi” Erdoğan
At a nez à nez cafe in the Golden Horn,
Fog over the Straits, fishmongers singing the blues,
Their little secret summit all over the news.
They gazed, they preened, with their fincan pinkies high,
Just two kings talking — evil eye to evil eye.
DJ flashed his grand, bizarre smile and sneered, “The Press
Is all over me and the country is a mess.
I fear some Lefty might impeach me with a gun
And I’ll find myself leaping in front of my son.”
Cepi laughed at that, and said, “Well, listen to this:
When they did Khashoggi — Oh, I watched with such bliss.
I jail journos, make them watch Midnight Express for fun.”
“Enemas of the State,” they harmonized, “Undone.”
They laughed about Idlib, and al-Baghdadi’s face
When he realized there was no escape cave in place.
Trump said, “He died like a dog and blew up the kids —
I lied,” he smirked, “Abbottabads Abbottobids.”
Cepi howled, “Badda bing bang boom — politics!
Nothing wrong with you a good hamamin’ can’t fix.”
The garson brought the tab and DJ made a lunge —
He didn’t want Cepi to think he was a sponge.
But Cepi was quick and snatched the bill and snickered,
“Your money’s no good here,” said Cepi; they bickered.
“CNN’s the most phoney fakes of news,” Trump said.
“What about the Kurds?” he mimicked the talking head.
At that, Cepi gave the garson a second glance,
Took back his tip, and made the poor waiter’s eyes dance.
The two good buds arose, Cepi winked and they strolled.
DJ said, “Mohammad got back to me to scold.
He said sweetly, ‘Donald, that wasn’t very nice’
To treat my discombobulations as a vice.
What if I’d made fun of your curtsy and laughed
To your face?’” Cepi cracked up, thinking DJ gaffed.
“There goes that Trump tower in Riyadh,” howled Cepi,
And slapped DJ on the back, dancing, two-steppy.
DJ morosely followed his Turkish delight.
They strode through the twists and turns of the Taksim night,
Down cobblestone streets, Cepi, like Virgil, leading —
Well, maybe if Virgil had had no real breeding —
And on the buds strode, ignoring the blood-kurdling screams,
Cepi saying, “Journos” (wink) “at work in their dreams.”
DJ pictured Maddow, with new bounce in his bones —
In fact, all the press! — and their screams became his koans.
After their purgatorial conversation,
They came to the Red Light D and knew their station.
They passed pervs, punks, pimps and glassed-in storefront cages
With dancing mannequin-like Beatrices of all ages.
Cepi said to DJ, “Go have a pussy grab.”
Trump groaned, “No can do, Cepi, my hand’s in rehab.
Until after November.” They left Paradise,
With the promise of pleasure still twinkling their eyes,
They giggled and goosed all the way to Taksim Square —
Pigeons out of control, broken heads strewn everywhere,
Tumbleweed tabloids, Atatürk’s pic on the ground,
Tarzan-like prayer calls, cab honks, and no other sound.
“DJ, you gotta break a few eggheads” (puffing)
“If you wanna make an Om.” But Trump’s mind was muffing
Back in the Red Light D. Cepi said, “Listen to this,
If you want to kill the king, you’d better not miss.”
DJ and Cepi Share a Joint
“I like oil. They got oil. We want their oil,”
Smirked DJ over at Cepi Tayyip.
“But what about the Kurds, who were so loyal?”
Came a hostile, high-pitched Fourth Estate quip.
“I promised Cepi he can have his way,
If we can have the oil.” Cepi smiled up.
The Pressman looked at Trump with such dismay,
and then he saw Cepi — all buttercup.
“But, sir, what you’re talking is a war crime,
And, frankly, it smells of more quid pro quo,”
Quoth our Camelot, another press corp mime.
To which DJ snapped, “Why, that’s a low blow!”
Cepi T snickered, he’d seen this stuff before —
The press all ruffled by such minor things,
War and oil and crime — and those Kurds what’s more!
After all, it’s what real politiks brings.
He recalled Donald’s invasion letter:
“Don’t be a tough guy” and “Don’t be a fool.”
The Press had turned it into a fetter
When Cepi replied, “I won’t be your fool.”
“Yo, Apprentice prez, what about the Daesh bizz,”
Snarked some intrepid “turd” from NBC.
“Depends on what you def of ISIS is,”
Retortled DJ Trump, without mercy.
Cepi moons, “There’s nothing wrong with DJ
That a steamy hamamin’ wouldn’t fix.”
Though an old poet, I felt oy vey!
(I thought of Midnight Express and Hands Blix.)
In a reverie, Cepi thought he heard,
“A Trump Tower along the Bosphorus,
between the two grand mosques preferred,
and just catering to the prosperous.”
The press keeps pressing for lit’ral meaning
(something they never bothered ‘bout before)
like asking a rooster why he’s preening,
A totally worthless thankless chore.
-John Kendall Hawkins
SOURCES
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/13/donald-trump-syria-oil-us-troops-isis-turkey