The Evil Dead, Too

[pjthompson]

From the notebooks, May 1, 1998.

This was a fecund period for me, poetry-wise. I was taking a poetry class at UCLA, and the teacher was good, and the students were good, and I felt really inspired. Our assignment was to write a poem a week, but I was so electrified I often wrote two or three. Not saying they were any good, but they were really pouring out of me. Everything I saw was a potential poem.



The Evil Dead, Too

The guy in the Evil Dead II
T-shirt
smoking a butt
tells the guy
at the shades kiosk,
"Communism
on a small scale
could work,
you know,
like Cuba . . ."

The fog hasn't quite
burnt off
although it's half-past
noon
the sun on one side
of the sky
the paling white
on the other
the breeze is cool
from the sea
lifting his hair
gently
off his shoulders.

The guy in the Evil Dead II
T-shirt
shuffles his feet
a nervous two-step
stabs the gentle air
with pointed smoke
bringing it home
bringing it home.

The sun
bright-reflects
a star sapphire
off the blue
CHP shades
hanging from the kiosk.

He talks on
the sun doesn't touch him
the guy at the kiosk
nods rhythmically
like a little dog
on springs
in the back of a Dodge.

—PJ Thompson

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see this set to music.

[pjthompson]

Thanks--that may be beyond me. But I was going for a jazz riff feel! :-)