POEM — Where You’re At

It’s 1967

Right now, right here in this poem,

So you can turn on

Your little plastic lime-green transistor radio

(Made in Japan)

And listen to Alex Chilton growl

Give me a ticket for an airplane,

And maybe you’ll stare

Long and hard into your orange

Percolating lava lamp,

 

But no, wait a minute,

It’s 1974, you want to take off your clothes

And run naked through a movie theatre,

Or it’s 1976, you just want to dance,

Or maybe you’re not really sure

What cotton picking year it is.

 

If that’s the case, buddy,

If you’re having that much fun,

If you’re giddy

From sniffing too much model airplane glue,

Or you’ve had way too many Pepsi Colas,

And now you just want to float yourself down

And back inside the time/space continuum,

There’s really no point

Asking me for directions.

You see, I invented this poem,

 

I’d only wind up telling you,

Listen to me good, you silly fellow,

I’m a crotchety old man,

I’ve got a squirming

Hairy thousand-legger

Bug up my butt,

And I’m living in my cellophane bag

And it’s miserable here

In my fish market wrappings

And I’m suffocating even as we speak,

 

And if you really want to know,

Well, okay, I suppose

There’s no harm stating the obvious,

Yes, that’s right,

It’s 1972.

 

*

 

Remington Murphy received his B.A. in 1980, and his M.A. in 1983, both in English from Temple University, where you can’t major in English anymore. In the 80’s he edited the Magic Bullet Science Fiction Anthology, then in the late 80’s/early 90’s he ran R.E.M. Press, which gave him an opportunity to publish some fine poets he met in graduate school, such as Sylan Esh and Michael Graves. In 1990 he published his own poetry chapbook, “Courting the Black Widow,” and then in 1993 he had a full length book of poems published, “Fear of Vision” (Arkada-Arch, New York). He has also published a collection of masques (e.g. short dramatic pieces written in verse), “Boogaloo” (Mellen Poetry Press, 2004).