So I can’t be sued by none of youse, as you always said,
wouldn’t care much about suing except to spit the word out like a curse.
But thanks guys for what I learned about how not to live life.
Ernie Bigush used to spit a lot more than he talked
when we were a gang--the Falcons--
with tough Porky as our fierce leader. His side kicks—
Ernie B., Sharkey, Kranns, Buttface?
Where’d they wind up?
I last saw Porky working at a gas station
when my Dad filled up to take me to college.
Porky grunted goodbye noting, it seemed,
the separation between his life and mine.
At our senior Homecoming football game, drunk as life,
you rose up, took off your helmets,
pounded the other team’s line until the refs stopped
the offense, threw you all out of the game.
Wrecked the annual student tomato fields fight
near Hays High School, a ritual turned into wanton mayhem
when the crowd smashed that fruit on neighbors' cars.
And you guys forced young Bonic to join
in a liquor store robbery, tossing him his share
of cash and booze, even when he started crying,
squeezed between Bigush and Kranns in the back seat.
But youse went to jail and Bonic didn’t
so my good-bye to Porky from Dad's car was more
a sigh of sadness than any single fond memory I ever kept.
Originally published in Cacti Fur Magazine