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Contests : Wergle Flomp Free Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2010 : Diana Chickosky
ODE TO A FRIEND
In England a chum
Is the person who daubs hydrogen peroxide after life
Has beaten the crap out of you
Your chum will not even be disgusted
By any residual crap-scent
Emanating from your derriere
In ENGLAND
With your CHUM
Your wounds will effervesce
Like champagne
Life will be a celebration
And poop will be so unshameful you could plop it
In any toilet
Anywhere
(Even if you knew people were listening)
IMAGINE!
But in San Francisco chum is the intestines
Fisherman yank out of their catch
You can get it free
To fertilize gardens
My friends and I would get it
To throw on our other friends lawns
We did this for several reasons
1) Hilarity
2) Elevated blood alcohol level
3) Hilarity...this is an important one
It must be mentioned again to stress importance
In San Francisco Joe Ford whacked the shit
Out of Nathan with a baseball bat
Rumor had it
It was over some girl
They played video games with
Years later in Connecticut
Ford showed up at the funeral
Suicidal maniacs have the best personalities
And the tone was the melancholy
Knowing
That those of us still around
Were somehow sub-par
Ford got drunk and told stories
Like everybody else
But he was only there for the vulnerable girls
The free booze
To be gifted
Like a child at Christmas
With shiny pieces of our smashed dreams
I got angry he was there
But that's only because somewhere between two oceans
I hitched a ride with a man
Who had a long thin chest
And claimed to be Jesus
Reincarnated
His mouth tasted like death and he taught me how to love
As soon as that happened
I got ugly and sad
And stayed that way
I keep Nathan in a purple vase in my living room
I should have daubed his wounds
But I burped whiskey and chucked fish colons
I made jokes about shit and God and retards that were so funny they cracked up
All the shiny frailty inside
When the ground gets soft again I'll push him into the earth in my backyard
Sometimes I think about the Jesus-guy and it makes me want
To drive into the heart of the country and find him pull
His ribs apart and stab sticks in his guts
Jam up his dangerous game
At the house after the funeral
I threw a drink at Joe Ford and yelled
"What are you doing here? What do you think you're doing?"
But the words just bounced off soggy spoonfuls of spinach dip
Vodka cranberries
And the stained rot of teeth in the back
Where the all the Whitestrips end.
No one cared not even Joe Ford
It drives me crazy when people tell me
I should really tell my story
I have something to offer
If I help even one person it would be worth it
All you preposterous people who want
To trace the craggy lines around the forlorn
Who write their fucking stories
Instructional manuals
To follow just on the outside chance
You get drunk
In a foreign country
And a beautiful girl
Tells you she wants you to meet her father
And leads you down a strange dark hallway
Opening a door upon which stepping through
You are swallowed by the Abyss.
This poem was a finalist in the 2010 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest sponsored by Winning Writers.
About Diana Chickosky
Diana graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in
sitting around thinking she was going to be the next great dark gritty
american novelist. Her novel is currently sitting in a dark desk drawer
collecting grit. It is, however, great (in her megalomanicial opinion) and
she does often have the feelin she should be next for something, so two out
of four ain't bad, as far as she's concerned. Her next novel-of-sorts, a
collection of contiguous prose poems, is due out late this fall and expected
to grace a particularly bare square foot under her bed. Her tenacity knows
no bounds, however, and she is still shopping for an agent. Besides writing
she is also a ballroom dance teacher and a painter, and is currently in
recovery from a vicious addiction to the recent onslaught of titillating
cable tv series.
She likes dogs, ice cream sundaes, and people who signal before changing
lanes.
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