PREAMBLE: - We have some good friends that live just off the interstate I 75 in Byron Georgia. Byron was growing real fast the last time I visited and unfortunately and inevitably was being polluted with the same infectious food chains and shops that with the viciousness of a Spanish Flu epidemic are rapidly spreading all over America. Even so, Byron is still an interesting place and you still have travel along I 49 to get there.
This performance piece is just a connection of observations about America, my adopted home and the place I love, especially the South. Like America, it is first a poem of contrast; racially, politically and culturally. Secondly and most importantly though, this piece is as warning for each and every one of us, against that dreaded complacency that comes with a fullness, which is fuelled by a fat and forgetful arrogance.
PERFORMANCE TIPS: If you dare, try to speak with a Southern United States accent of some of these delightful Dixie like words. Indeed, some of these words are so onomatopoeic that they are just fun to say out loud and need saying in the sound they make. ‘Slidin; skin’ for example is like a slow slip handshake, take your time with these kind of words and you will feel the action and also communicate it well. Again this poem has a 2/4 beat and needs a lot of breath.
Now, imagine you are riding to the top of a roller coaster. Got it? Well the words ‘Lightest blues Largest skies Darkest cheeks Whitest eyes- need to be said as slow and as expectantly as the last few yards at the top of the mechanized pull up. Then, ‘De-caff, diet Racial riot Look Out’ mountain What a si-yat’ need to be said as though the Roller Coaster car is high above the ground on an flat even surface building up speed as it approaches its first enormous plummet. Take a very deep breath here before ‘Hillary’ (as recommended by most Republicans) and then enjoy the ride. Everything comes to a clattering halt at ‘Presidents that cause a stink (well they would wouldn’t they’ and the last two words are said slowly and deliberately. Here we go then:
I49 & Other Roads
----------O----------
Reckless Rednecks on I49Bare foot children at the Five & Dime
Black men shakin’, slidin’ skin
Pick up trucks with nothin’ in
An extra syllable in evr’y vowel
Sealed flannel sheets and fresh-up towels
De-caff coffee
Diet coke
Well-dressed Christians and a hairy goat
Crushed armadillo and a white wooden house
1 Skeeter bugs a dancing on black-eyed peas
Wal Mart
K-Mart
Plastic cheese
Plates that are full with more and more
Dirt in the corners at the 2Piggly Wiggly storeStrange verbal pointers to a guy called Booodah
Sweet & Low as a substitute for sugar
Porches full of rockers and swinging chairs
Blue perm rinses
Nasal hairs
Bland white cream on pecan pies
3Hell mad preachers, all wearing ties
Lightest blues
Largest skies
Darkest cheeks
Whitest eyes
De-caff, diet
Racial riot
4‘ Look Out’ mountain
What a si-yat
5Hillary being pilloried in pounding pulpits
Passion for possession of presidential pundits
AN 6ELEPHANT, AN ELEPHANT,
A SMALL PINK PIG
Small English people where everything is big
White-collar necks that don’t give a 7fig
Don’t give a fig for a 8hot cross bun
Don’t give a fig for a man without a gun
For a man without a gun
Ain’t got no stature
A man without a gun
Don’t like 9Mrs. Thatcher
Mrs. Thatcher, Mrs. Thatcher
What a gal!
Ronny Reagan what a pal!
England and America
Bonded ties
England and America
Don’t tell lies
Don’t tell lies about 10dogs in prison
Don’t tell lies about any ‘ism’
Socialism
Communism
11Baptist schism
Split apart
Break my heart
Separation
Desolation
Bringing down of evil nation
12Evil nation, makes you think!
Blacks and white are on the brink
Ice rink, blue ink, kitchen sink
13Presidents that cause a stink
High and mighty you may frown
14I WILL BRING YOU DOWN
© 2012 Victor Robert Farrell
----------O----------2For my British readers I have to tell you that yes, there are a chain of stores in the South called Piggly Wiggly! I can only imagine the first board meeting in someone’s kitchen or old barn or even a smoky old bar where the founding executives, some good old boys maybe with farmer’s tans, sat down and discussed what to name this new enterprise and after a few shots of white lightning came up with the forward thinking name of ‘Piggly Wiggly’.
“Yes sir”, said Goober Bouhger, “Piggly Wiggly! Catchy name. I like it! Boy I’ll tell you whurt, we’re a gonna make a barrel load a money on that bad boy name. Yes siree, whoooeeee, Piggly Wiggly, shut yer mouth and slap yer grandma!”
The name Piggly Wiggly really sets the tone for the whole mess of stores. Cheap, run down, dirty, plastic and nasty. Tell you what though, if you haven’t got a lot of money and work in a chicken factory in the Mountains of North Georgia, then Piggly Wiggly is a veritable God send. The last one I went to was in fact across the road from a Chicken factory in Ellijay, North Georgia in one of those same mountain towns. It was right next to the consignment shop that sold junk to support a home for fleeing battered women of husbands who drank too much, treated them no better than their hound dogs and couldn’t get a job at the chicken factory across the road, which, just to show the greasier side of life, left a layer of fine mist of chicken fat slippy-ness in the parking lot and an odour in the entrance of the Piggly Wiggly store that smelled like the devil’s underpants after a long weekend of sinning.
3The South of course is full of Bible buckle, Bible belt independent fundamentalism. I am a fundamentalist with my emphasis laying on the fun, rather than on the damn mental. You know what I mean. Jesus spoke more about hell than anyone and certainly in His earthly ministry, spoke more about hell than heaven. However, He wasn’t wearing a suit and tie and ‘spittin in yer’ eye while slamming down His fist on an old wooden pulpit, His badly tied tie, hanging from a fat neck and draped over a bulbous belly that has spent far too many Sunday afternoons in ‘Shoneys.’ No, when Jesus spoke of hell, He wasn’t self righteous, no siree, He spoke about hell in very angry terms, to the self righteous, I say especially to the religious self righteous! Tight neck ties make self righteous preachers even fatter and redder than they were before. Maybe they should be banned from the pulpit. (No, I am not talking about the neck ties!)
4Look Out Mountain in Chattanooga.
5Hillary Clinton. Of course!
6Southern Democrats were once the South’s popular Christian Party. Now, to be a Democrat, is to be thoroughly associated with the devil! I was once fired from a Romanian Baptist church in South Florida because I said you could be a Christian and vote Democrat. I kid ye not.
7Fig leaves, were of course supposedly first used to cover up Adam and Eve’s unmentionables! So if you don’t give a fig…well, it means you don’t really care. At all! You don’t give a fig.
8In old Christian countries Good Friday saw the baking of Buns with a cross marked on their tops. White collar workers, the rising professional class of America, don’t really care for the old fashioned Easter Gospel or any of its traditions. And Oh yes and Bun rhymes with gun!
9Ah, The Thatcher Reagan years. What a beautiful mess.
10There are always ‘dog’s in prison.’ ‘Extraordinary rendition’ has of course now been legalized in offshore illegal dog pounds. Though Obama says he’s going to shut down ‘Gitmo'.
12Which Empire proved to be maybe most evil in the years following the cold war end?
13The Clintons again.
14God’s vow in how He shall crush the rising up of Lucifer, that old light of the morning, and anyone, thing or nation, motivated, activated, sanctioned or certified by him. Jer 49:16 “O you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, Who hold the height of the hill! Though you make your nest as high as the eagle, I will bring you down from there," says the LORD” NKJV
Anyhoo - Do hope you enjoyed the poem!
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