(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.