CE Whiting is an artist/writer who lives and works in Hampshire County. She is a Straw Dog member.
Mr. Big Stuff
God damn, we had it good in the hood,
(We didn’t call it that) expats from the ‘burbs
no curbs no gutters. Butterflies fluttered.
Hey, Mr. Big Stuff, a mistake, a misstep.
Who do you think you are?
Every word worthy, down to the worst.
First to last fastened with a clasped hand
and a hey and a ho and a nonny
Donny knows.
No really. Never did he ever make a mistake.
Never ever, always clever hand on the lever
live or die I see you out
from the side of my eye—peripheral fringe
edgy hedging your bets, the best bet better,
A setter on point. A pointer. A painter,
a candlestick maker, the fakiest faker,
oh please make me a patty cake.
You’re a banker? My mistake.
Make it a patsy cake.
Forgive me for dancing knees up Mother Brown,
a cantankerous can-can. Catch me if you can.
Can these follies bare chairmen of the board?
There once was a sweet doll named Charlotte,
little lolly she really could gallop.
Oh, Lolly! Lolita!
(I detest that book and do not apologize. Rather, I realize
that one man’s fancy is repugnance enough.)
Alarm bells peeling, Mr. Big Stuff is weightless asleep,
free from mistakes, balls leaping over tree tops
with Flopsy and Mopsy, white cotton-tailed
and giddy hoppity hoppers, talented shoppers,
I begged them to stop the insanity
bag after bag of inanity, workaday happy profanity…
…but back to the fancy of the never-wrong man
who cannot make a mistake,
in the flow going over the facts,
facets of clickety clack down the track
one way, his way, the only way always.
Wu wei? No way!
Never did I ever see such stupidity on display,
cathode ray to plasma screeds onscreen.
“This not that, but not those either.”
(Up one side upside down then downside up
straight down the other.)
Mr. Big Stuff is a real nutter, nuttier than a pet rock,
“My pet, my pretty pet! Look, she’s a hottie.
Look, but don’t touch.”
Such a nutter, he putters—great short game, never the same.
Day to day, keeps ‘em guessing.
To his friends—the closer
keeps his enemies closer
for the great clusterfuck
To be Epic. Bigly Biblical.
Grab some goggles and gloves, a flack jacket and mask.
Don’t shoot until you see two good days in a row.
Is that too much to ask?
I’d like to master laughter for all occasions—spectacular screwups,
shotgun weddings, vague misunderstandings,
inordinate numerals, anonymous funerals,
fallacious suppositions in quantum superposition.
A mistake? No such thing.
Nopity nope.
No such a thingity thing.