Pursey Tuttweiler

The Poet, Part II

Here is another poem by Jim Spurr.  Photo is of Chet Baker, fellow Okie like Jim.  This poem is NOT about me.

                                Very Scary Mary

Her satchel was a stuffed thing that contained cigarettes and a whiskey flask

along with keys to her parents 1951 Ford Victoria

and she had one friend, Jenny the B.

Mary and Jenny were not team players.

They believed that it was a weakness to have beliefs.

That allowed them to avoid religion, politics and sports.

The friendship welded based on an agreement

that they were living in the wrong decade.  1952 was an error of nature.

Cruel and dumb.  Jenny felt they would have been more comfortable

at the turn of either the last century or the next one coming up in 48 years.

It hailed the day they graduated from high school as they expected it would.

It was like they were trapped in the midway at a carnival gone broke.

They went different ways, Mary and Jenny the B.

Jenny went to state college

then disappeared down south and hung for most of her life

with the lower classes in a roadside bar and grill, maybe Texas or Arkansas,

Where she made few friends and died alone listening to "Heartbreak Hotel."

Mary missed the funeral.  It took a year to find her.

She got moved around a lot by the penal system.

She rubbed out her husband John three years into their marriage.

He had been a B student in highschool and went on to college

where he was a third team wide receiver which gave him many bench

opportunities to meet cheerleaders.

Had he not wedded Mary, he could have had a Jimmy Stewart Wonderful Life.

With cheerleader humping as an added bonus.

And John, like Mary and Jenny, had done

what he could to keep his life simple.

Simple, that is, as simple can be simple.

That's how the cops saw it.

To quote the investigating detective,

"Open and shut.  Husband messes around.  Wife shoots husband.  End of story.  Anyone know if she has family?  What about friends?.......None?  Figures."

M

The Poet

My brother-in-law, Jim Spurr is a poet living in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

He wrote this poem about my husband and me.

The Earth All Shook Up

He's a jazz drummer,

my brother, and a smart guy,

Playing in a smart band.

The Katie O Combo.

And his wife is a looker

from Memphis.

She never knew Elvis

but she knows his haunts

and she knows the mystery

of the why and the need

for that man and that music

at that moment..

I know these things because

I know her

And I know the drummer-man.

She says

Memphis holds the secret

of it all.....

the stage, the shoes

the sideburns, the Blues

Beale Street.

America its plain self.

 

by Jim Spurr