by Catfish McDaris

The Night Jimi Hendrix Asked Me to Dance

When you fall in love, you lose all five of your senses. Oscar Chavez

Valentina and Sniper hadn’t been

together long, after a heated discussion

with friends, about great bands

Moby Grape, Strawberry Alarm Clock,

Spooky Tooth, Iron Butterfly, Buffalo

Springfield, they all went to a dance

Three couples hit the floor, crazy wild

uninhibited throwing hair and hips, after

five fast songs, they played John Lennon’s

My Girl, Valentina tried to lead, Sniper

frowned, she said, “You dance like a

cowboy,” “That’s my Texas Two-Step.”

“We need practice,” they all sat down for

a breather, Mendes and John drank a beer,

a young black dude asked Sniper to dance

Sniper said, “No thanks, I’ve never danced

with a man,” “That’s not what you told me

last week. We spent the night dancing

Together. You told me I looked just like

your hero, Jimi Hendrix,” Almost everyone

at the table was laughing and crying.

Shaking at the Crazy Horse

Jitterbug and electric slide

Peppermint twist and the alligator

The donkey has fleas and the frog

Is a dirty dirty smelly dog

Do it pretty mama

Do it to them all

Dancing on the floor

And dancing on the wall

Fred Astaire just rolled over

In his grave and Ginger Rogers

Shook it left and right, wrapped

Her legs around the pole real tight

Gogo dancers doing the bunny hop

Mashed potato and sanctified monkey

Cotton-eyed Joe at the Alamo

Boogaloo, limbo, tango and bossa nova

Pick any dance like there is no

Tomorrow back flip and start all over

Listen close and hear Old Cocaine Willy

Dipping and waltzing with lovely Millie.

A Can of DEATH

The snow melted upon her skin
hot drifting desert sand blown
smooth hungry and beautiful

The two wars inside each person
go on forever, love and hate
the sky always a gun barrel blue gray

After she left all was loneliness and
one can on a table the label read
DEATH, eat it before it eats you.

Her Taco Tasted Like Rain

Our love making was like a spaghetti

western; good, bad, and ugly

Her freckles were devil’s kisses

showering down from purgatory

She used to striptease, while a monkey

played viola and the organ grinder did just that

Stumbling through time, I wished I’d never

eaten her shit sandwich lies

She drove stakes through my

obsidian oblivious soul

Slipping and melting through my fingers

like mawkish snow and raging wind.

My cheeks were wet rivers,

tears swimming from Nagasaki

My heart imploded and exploded

in the fiery pain of Hiroshima

Blood in the salt, lime, and tequila

I know now I should’ve cared more for you.

Humanity Matters

Sixty-seven years ago on Route 66

I was born near the Sangre de Cristos

Yesterday the love of my life and I

saw a protest sign that read: Save A

Life, Kill A Cop, my Mexican wife cried,

my knuckles clenched the steering wheel

Our young daughter is a rookie cop, in

the bloody torn streets of Milwaukee

Black Hawk helicopters patrol the skies,

army snipers are assigned to the roofs

Of all the police stations, rioters are

throwing Molotov cocktails, bricks,

And bullets, they loot stores and burn

neighborhoods and aggravate the pandemic

I cleaned my weapons, I hadn’t touched

for forty years, anybody wants to hurt

Our blue angel, they will pay, I will take war

unto thy streets, until my guns fall lifeless.

BIO: Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. His work is at the Special Archives Collection at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is listed in Wikipedia. His ancestors were related to Wilma Mankiller from the Cherokee Nation. Currently he’s selling weed in a dangerous neighborhood in Milwaukee.

five poems

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