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

Comments

[susan]

Jim Spurr's poems are excellent, true to common life yet beautifully universal in eloquence. Please offer my compliments.

I've come by to pick up a link to your page.

[Spadoman]

Hey Clutch... So brother writes too. Cool. Now I can't say I understand it all, but it gives me a glimpse of someone, known or not known, real or surreal. It gives me a picture of a story. Any writer that can do that in a few short sentences has something to give. Very Good!

[purseytuttweiler]

Joseph, He is a tremendous poet, but his reading would blow you away. He reads each year at the Arlo Guthrie festival in Oklahoma and has been backed up by David Anram on piano as he read. Jim Spurr was nominated two years ago for Poet Laureate of Oklahoma. Came in 2nd. He has been recorded for the Library of Congress reading B.H. Fairchild's poem Body and Soul. He is 72, an ex insurance adjuster and has Parkinsons. He reads at least once a week at Oklahoma venues within a hundred mile radius of his home. He is truly incredible. Email me your address and i will send you some of his published collections. My favorite is titled "It's Cool After 2:00 a.m. I am so glad you like his poetry. He is my brother-in-law, hubby's brother, but he aint heavy, he's my brother. I know we are blood related, perhaps in another life. He would LOVE you!!!! Your dialogue in the Virginia Woolf movie was incredible. Lana Nelson is going to make that movie for us. meanwhile, she is working on our second movie, the first was Running of the Bulls. I will send you a copy of that when you send me your address. I am her agent and entered it into Sundance, but were not accepted. her latest, due out in 4 weeks is a Spanish Novella. I play two roles, my first as a woman in prison and my second as a woman out of prison with a sex change operation trying to pass as Cezar Chavez!!! Everything we do is unscripted improv by The Hormones, a group of women friends who have been together through every hormonal change in life, from puberty to menopause. You will love the Running of the Bulls. It is clever, raunchy, and compelling. A short, about 35 minutes long.