The Queen of Meat

By S.A. Griffin

flies west every March
to pay homage to
The King

small
dressed in black
wearing her sex on her sleeve
along with her heart
she's somewhat like the
Skinny Dynamite of
Micheline's verse
and has got a little bit of the
Doris Day twinkle going on behind that
Kahlua in a bottle
loose cereal
cigarettes and
wacky tabacky
all stashed in her
dufflebag of tricks

one of those rare humans
she loves animals and people too

loves talking about sex
and doing it

"So this guy see,
he hooks up with this chick on the internet, and they
get together. Only he don't know that she's only
14. I mean she looks older, but that don't matter.
They slam his ass in the fucking jail anyways. Poor fucking guy.
He ain't the first one she done this to."

she's onto it
giving it to me about
some guy she hooked up with
via the net
as we book down the110 South
towards land's end and
Bukowski

who the fuck knows what she does
except that she can craft a poem
scratch out a living
and work the room like a continent from behind her
computer
somewhere in New Jersey
where the Revolution slept and
changed the music on the world's
jukebox

in possible defense of my own sweet jewels I reply,
"You mean she does this to other older guys?"

"Yeah. Even the judge was aware of it."

"But the law's the law, right? The fucking law.
The mathematics of truth made right by the almighty
fucking dollar."

"Yep. That's the way it goes. Got his dick into a
real soup."

"Sure as fuck did. Dick soup."

we laugh
poor dumb fucker
struck stupid by the man thing
thinking from the bottom
and not dealing from the
top

the drive ain't bad
especially with Cait riding shotgun
and soon enough
we are there

where he's buried

we snake thru the ghostly quiet avenues
that frame this place
where memory is short and time is
long

curb the car
get out and
begin to scour the damned rolling hillsides
on this
our once a year day
looking for the flat stone against the shaved earth
where The King of Meat rests
and no longer has to tolerate poetry crusaders
like ourselves
out to reform the academy with our
wit like ketchup and words like
cheese

but he'd like Cait
she's special

after wandering for way too long
we find the sacred spot

Cait has brought flowers
plucked from somewhere
down the hill
where they won't be missed

we make ourselves
comfortable
and we sit there

year after year now

as often our talk turns to poets
poems
and poetry

the famous lady poet of the east who writes like a raging gray river of fear

the lost Los Angeles
California slammers
and all slammers who
scream and shout
but forget that The Lady muse
cannot be fooled by their
pyrotechnics and veiled
need for attention

the mighty Midwestern Ohio poets that smith their words out of
sweat and labor
welded together in a union of
platelet spit and steel

and everywhere she goes
it's a party
and another
great story to tell

and what's not to like?

she likes everyone
and they like her

I like stories
and so does Bukowski
who listens
breathlessly beneath the headstone that
bears his name

we talk and party on
as the newly dead roll by with their
muted living in tow

the pines ache green in the misty March

we tip our empties into the grass
leaving them with the other dead soldiers
from former campaigns

Cait leaves her sex toy for the man
a keepsake
something for him to write about
something to tell Ginsberg
Pound and
Plath
a big long fleshy thing with a baby's head and a
tongue like a fucking rock star vibrating with voracious verve
agitating the asshole of this manic planet
and exciting the prick of time
urging laughter from the universe
until we pass this way
again

Jersey Cait giggles and produces a plastic baggie,
"I'm gonna git me some o' his dirt."

she gathers a small bit of the big man's earth
sticks it into the sandwich baggie along with some
of Buk's butts
and a few blades of Whitman's grass