top hat devil and me
blink and you’ll bank too hard and then you’ll
ride off Monteagle, like that Johnny Cash song
caffeine pills and coke, I didn’t bring em along
no one’s back there waiting, no joke
those strings went slack when the neck got bent
and I can’t feel shit.
top hat demon and me got a thing going on
but it ain’t clear, and the feeling’s not strong
Mrs Jones fell asleep in the movies, so lonely.
Forty five dollars to snore through Bond.
And it wasn’t why I moved on,
not entirely only
we dream we die right, all Steve McQueen cool
on a bike against Nazis, not coughing out lung
not losing all the hair. Not flailing like a fool
a faithless fat saint plucked from the ground,
flung into the air. Hilts didn’t die young
they caught him in the wire.
me and Topper get along, we’re chums. That’s why
we’re done. I held a cold Cheerwine to my noggin
I said “I said, ‘Outside the Qualla, I’ll let
magick do with a view of a lake’ I’ll ossify
till I’m mushrooms, gas station toboggan
and a pleather wallet”
once again. Poor Professor Higgins, so glum
he’s tone deaf, no tabs, just the transcript
why can’t a demon be more like a man? once sung
he sprechgesang, did he ever, dry as a bone
I give up what the hell like a Russian conscript.
Reckon I’ll just go home.
Purgatory is Cherokee casino.
Redcaps watching sportswar TV in the bar
Placing bets on tanks and the fate of Dnipro
We never went in. We fished the Ocoee
Top Hat drinks white liquor from a jar.
I must get to know me.
