Arthur Graham’s Reviews > I Hope It's Not Over, and Good-By.: Selected Poems of Everette Maddox > Status Update

Courtin'

It was Sunday in the swamp
I was all dressed up
like Albert the Alligator
(handsome man look good
in anything he put on)
I said to the turtle
I said "Hand me that banjo
I'm goin' over to Suzy's house
and serenade her"
Turtle said "You goddamn fool
you never played no banjo in your life"
& I said "Yeah
but you ain't seen Suzy
I'm gone play her
the complete works of Rimsky-Korsakov"

Another dumb
anecdote's turning
into a poem down at
S. Carrollton & Claiborne.

Old friend,
why can't we at least
make the right mistakes?

God's Last Words to the Stars

Coming home from beer with a beer
I hear the brain cells popping off
one by one like firecrackers

The stars going out one by one
leaving the sky black

God sweeping the last stars
under the celestial rug

Muttering not Good riddance
to bright rubbish but (more kindly)
Out of sight out of mind

Approaching the Solstice

Canal Street sizzles
like an egg on the grill:
high in the nineties.

Jesus! a man would have to be
crazy, or in his sixth
childhood, to fall in love again
in this town in the summer!

But nobody ever learns
anything—that's what
tragedy teaches. So
my hottest wish now
rather figures: to get
out of the frying pan
and into the fire
under your cool white dress.

The language wants
to love you: let it.

I'll never write another line
for anything but love
in this city where steam
rises off the street after
a rain like bosoms heaving.

I was a rebel against
the confederacy of the saved; I wanted to be
wearing a monocle and drinking
neon COCKTAILS, leaning on a lamppost
on the broadest boulevard in hell,
or cruising down the river
to heaven between your legs.

Park Bench Poem

Mind if I put up
a park bench
in your mind?
I mean, if
the mind is a park,
why not have a poem in it?

The Reason Why

My eyes? You don't have
to tell me. I stay
drunk all the time now.
It's on purpose. I'm
drinking myself to
death. Melodrama!
That's why. Because just
living is a dis-
traction. Getting out
of the car, the bed,
the rain, is next to
impossible. And
being drunk makes it
harder, which makes me
mad, which is how I
like it. Because it
never occurred to
me that the end of
the world would be so
dull.