Pal, you better go back

Pal, you better go back

The CPR class you took all Fall
hadn't targeted the fat cat at Kodak
who ran over that thin little squirrel
the same morning of the very same
day he returned from Whyte Bridde
Country Club drunk as a harmless
homeless man and struck your dad
and killed him, a tea-totaler, not a two-
timing, three-DUI exec at Merrill-
Lynch the same year the mobs lost
their stuffed shirts, but you still save
him when he collapses on the steps
of the Courthouse you just happened
to have been protesting at, protesting
the same rhetoric he had forced on him
by his old man or his old lady or some-
one just like you writing this pomer-
hang, harangue, Orangutan, one-little-
ring-a-ding ring-a-ding dinggy, Ding-
dong, the watch is dead and your hands
all point to a sundial great-assed paper-
weight holding down the back lawn as
you make all of this up for the best of reasons
or no reason at all or because you love poetry
or because you love yourself "as a person"
who writes poetry or because it's really
late on a Friday afternoon before closing time
and the three-day weekend and no
special reason other than that at all.
But listen, Pal, you better go back and
take "your dad" out of this or I'll rip your
typing fingers off your hands somehow!