2014.07.28 Roots

(A reissue of the 1973 Negative Heel,

image by Wikipedia)

Once I lived in a town in north Louisiana

where you had to drive 30 miles to get a beer

in Monroe where the barkeep asked me, trying to help,

if I didn't think it might be me that was unfriendly.

A student, a professor's son, broke into my office

and peed on my desk because I'd separated him

from two Vietnam vets who were copying

from him. He would "have it out with me," he yelled

crazy in his eyes, if I did it again, so I knew

it was him. The vets dropped the course.

I asked the dean what to do about Sonny Boy.

"If it was me I'd whup his ass," he drawled.

In the spring I got drunk in New Orleans and stretched out

in a field, feeling finally like a real Louisiana man

beside the highway coming home to sober up.

A woman stopped to ask if I was ok. "Yes," I lied,

and moved on to San Francisco, found the hippies gone

but Irish bars and Roots, the ugliest shoe ever (then).

Didn't last long there either, turned my Negative Heels

on North America which didn't seem to want me, nor me

it and finally landed here in Sozialstaat Deutschland

who did.