[Newspoetry] Poem for Joe

[Sam Markewich 2]

Forty Athol Street: a Memoir
by Sam "On the Beat" Markewich

First I remember the news
how old I felt when I stayed up late,
ate T.V. dinners
counted channels for days and nights at Forty Athol Street.

No parent was home.
It was late.
Nothing was apparent yet.
I crept up.
Got remote.
Lost control.
Started.
To watch.
Watched.
Bored.
Snored.
Dreamt to myself, "Them are the adult, your lip drip news?"

I remember the news:
adults, 
watch news, 
read news, 
fold news,
hear news, 
spread news.
Not at all like spreading feces -- or butter.
Butter melts; news drops, floats, gels.
It all falls into place, even the falling outs fall out into place and
fall in out of place, like they never didn't not ever happendixes
leading far astray of whose when happened yesterday.
"Adults," I thought, drifiting back into a dream, "What a bunch of,"
excuse my French, "Athols!"  (I thpoke with a lithp.)

But, I was brought up in Oakland, Californ-i-a
at Forty Athol Street
A proper home for white scouts
and boy boys
to conceal those who run for office,
those who re-invent re-inventing re-inventing the wheel.
And so, I determined that I too would be grown-up someday.
But, then I watched the news, ate fruit compote and salisbury steak,
decided I would either have to stray, a child, or kill myself.  For, to
be blunt, the news sucked ath!

But, ah ideals die easier than men.  
And now I'm running for presiden-
t of these United States of America.  
And news looks less hysterica-
l, brighter these days with my ass plastered all over the noses of the
headlines that light my way to the finish, like two buttocks meadiated
by a crack and an anus that are durably affixed to a myriad of locations
upon the area surrounding the nasal cavities of the brief, grammatically
incorrect items found in bold print upon a newspaper.  

And as I sit back
and muse news now over those days at Forty Athol Street
I can recall the daythth and nightth with a lithp
only ath thothe of ephemera,
like a thlick thelf-referential thimily that thort of rhymeth with camera,
only faintly, a whisp of the self-unimportant youthful halo that
surrounds all white whites with moneyed money and privileged privilege
through viscous connections with certain types of company from here to
Timbucktoothed smelly underbelly.

And yet, yesterday,
the day I evicted those g-d damned fucking nasty-ass good-for-nothing
scummy, smelly foreigners
from Forty Athol Street and jacked up the rent
to make room for a dotcomer
sticks to my ribs like evening sticks to night, like I in matters of
campaign finance stick to someone's guns, like stickiness sticks to
sticky buns, like dirty dry holes cracked in the sun,
like similies re-invent the wheel,
like similies re-invent the wheel,
like similies re-invent the wheel,
similar to the way that similies re-invent similies,
like homeopathy turned against itself,
like like likes like,
like like,
don't like differences,
don't liken differences to change,
don't differentiate between likeness and difference,
don't know the difference between likeness and the same thing over and
over and over again, like like like like like like like like like like
like like like

And whom do I think is the Athol now?
Is it the child who likens herself to liking herself liking herself too
much to ever want to grow up, too much to read the news that cannot be
written on the wall, too much to pay for the news that makes the writing
on the wall a felony?  Or is it the fellow on his knees, like Saul
Bellow listening to Melanie, in the news room who brackets everything he
says with guns and money and blames it on what's not yet done?  Or is it
me, the boy in the blue bubblepack pajama suit who sticks his nose to
the grindstone, the grindstone up his ath and sings G-d Bless, G-d
Bless, G-d Bless?