[Newspoetry] (no subject)

[Brian Richards]

	Bad Guy Blues

Nobody likes bad guys
Who fly airliners full of business people and vacationers
Into buildings full of business people and vacationers. 
I'm a bad guy. I have Bad Guy Syndrome
And AASD: Adult Attention Surfeit Disorder.
I don't act the way the Attorney General thinks I should.
Kids have sex with goats in my My Favorites folder.
I carry a loaded weapon. That's my 
Silhouette heroes practice their markspersonship on.
My poems have a shelf life of five minutes.
I didn't vote. 
I don't own stock.
I didn't make a penny off the energy crunch.
I don't put down the toilet seat after I. P. Standing.
My religion exalts Samarians over Levites.
I am a bad guy, 

		   bad as Fidel Castro and Eminem and that guy who had
The vision of the Virgin in Cow Shit.
I sing off key
And clap my hands on the back beat.
I smear cat shit on quarters and drop them on the floor of the market.
I'm not even original.
I'm really a bad guy. 

				I don't have a name, or a personality,
No children. Only the uninformed love me.
It's my disorder. I kill for love.
Anyone who is uninformed enough to love me has
Not been listening to those who are informed.
Look out,  I am following my heart.
My dad told me to. He taught me how
To be a bad guy.
Son, he said, they call it the Bottom
Line for a reason. Don't ever go there. Stay off
The bottom. Live for love. Be a bad guy.
Even if you are officially wrong, follow your heart, and if it aches too
much
For starving children and flogged women and abandoned gods,
Blow the bastards up. They are heroes.
They have businesses and go on vacations and all the bad guys can
Just stay home and watch their babies' bellies swell with bile.
They're the bad guys. They deserve it.
I'm a bad guy. 

				I don't deserve a vacation or a business
Or an NYFD cap. Or a break. George said so.
He learned it from Roy, and Gene, and Hoppy.
They knew a bad guy by the black checkered keffiyeh.
So does Uncle Dick. He's not a bad guy. He made millions; hell,
He's still making millions off the energy crunch.
He knows it's not a shortage. Only bad guys come up short.
I came up short, but with everything I need and a few quarters extra.
I'm looking for a few good men who'll bend over and pick them up.
O, I am a bad guy. 

				I've got a sharp knife and I use it
To let the air out of the tires of heroes in jogging outfits 
parked in differently enabled spaces.
I'm so bad my driveway is vertical and way too rough for your car.
It's not paved. It's a bad driveway. 
Not for people's adventures in the real world of their Honda Explorer.
That guy who went over the waterfall in his kayak? 
He's a bad guy. The shoe bomber is his best friend, 
Along with the unibomber. He was so bad. Who'd bomb a uni?
Not George W. He'd bomb a country. Like bad guy Bill,
Before he splashed on her dress and proved he was a bad guy,
When he was a good guy and proved it by bombing Baghdad
So good it even killed business people and vacationers.
I was so bad that I hated him for that.
I was as bad as he was but not as dumb.
I would have kept it in her mouth. 
Actually, I probably would have knocked her up
And then urged her to abort for the good of the country.
That's how bad I am, 

				and I'm getting worse every day.
But if I live to be a hundred-don't hold your breath-
I'll never be as bad as Dante, that rebel;
Or perverts like Sappho and Catullus and Stein and Duncan;
Or Shakespeare or Pound or Sharon-anti-semites, the lot of them;
Or Shelley-did you know he drove his first wife to suicide
Without even being in the same country? He was bad.
Or Bob Marley: he couldn't spell his name right, 
Same as that other sodomite, Kit Marlowe;
And he thought that goofy little egomaniac was God,
That Ras guy: Tafari? Perot? He was 
Bad even before he screwed Gee Aitch 
And put Bill in touch with Monica's Texas Instrument.

All us bad guys need to leave your heroes alone
So they don't have to be heroes, just business people and vacationers.
All us bad guys need banished; that's what oceans are for. 
That's why God gave America to our foreheroes,
So they could get away from bad guys
Like me. I'm a bad guy. 

				Don't let me hide in your forest any more.
I might scare a vacationer.
Exile me to France. On a small pension. 
They worship bad guys in Paris: Aznevour, Belmondo.
Those are bad guys bad guys can hang with. And bad girls.
Or Kabul. It's the next Prague. Or Sarajevo.
They appreciate bad guys in such places. 
As long as they don't piss off Dubya. 
He's the baddest guy on the planet and if you mess with him
You'll end up like Osama, wherever he is.
Maybe he's in Paris, with Jean Seberg.
Anyway, Dubya's the first letter 
In Washington, and I'm here
to tell you I'm a bad guy.

				     I just don't get it. I know that
Because people I know who know tell me often that
I just don't get it. Whatever it is
Other than a pronoun that's supposed to stand for something.
Dubya stands for something I don't get. 
I'm a bad guy 
				and the only part of me that's still
standing
Is what makes me so bad.
Chemical castration is too good for me.
Paris sounds more appropriate.
But it won't be much longer until they do cure bad guys with a pill.
Then there won't be any more.
Then the world will be perfect for business people and vacationers.
And we'll all get rich off the energy crunch.
Except for Pfizer and Squibb. Heroes of American business.
And they won't care because they'll already be rich from selling pills to
the government
To cure all the bad guys with.

				Cela
 N'est pas la vie, I'll say,
Strolling down the boulevard with Jean Seberg
On my arm, Gauloise on my lip,
Poems falling out the holes in my pockets.


							Brian Richards
	
brichards at shawnee.edu