UNVARNISHED TRUTH
When I was a small child in the early 1940s
I would get to visit my grandparents
In Cedar Falls Iowa
And they had things there that
Greatly annoyed me
Each summer
The good things mostly offset the bad
But I am weird today because
My grandfather used to cut the heads
Off chickens in the backyard
And he thought it was funny
When they would run after me
With their heads off
One time a headless chicken chased me
Right up the back porch steps
And beat itself against me
While I tried to escape through
A screen door that would not open
Because it was hooked on the inside
The dying chicken acted like a wind-up toy
Stuck in a corner
And it just kept thrashing against me
Until I became a different person forever
And the chicken ran down
And Grandma sped in from her garden
Like a fast ship
Her starched dress billowing like a sail
Otherwise mostly it was fun there
Except for when the peacocks wailed
Crazily in the night
And the house creaked and groaned
And I writhed under the
Hied-up bedclothes scared and sometimes
With chiggers burrowing
In my penis
Every summer I could look forward
To a nail-polished penis
The special remedy of the house
For these nasty no-see-ums
I never experienced anywhere else
But there at 2009 Clay Street
They were attracted to me
And they unfailingly established
Housekeeping in my penis
Rarely was I bitten anywhere else
It was a mind-bending horror
To suffocate bugs slowly that way
Until 6-12 came along later
Then my life through chemistry
Became a better thing
But too late for my overall future
There is no way of assessing
What lasting damage was wrought
By that chicken and the chiggers
What I might have become
without their rude attacks
Upon my space and privacy
And that is
the unvarnished truth
[dzd 8-24-98]
When I was a small child in the early 1940s
I would get to visit my grandparents
In Cedar Falls Iowa
And they had things there that
Greatly annoyed me
Each summer
The good things mostly offset the bad
But I am weird today because
My grandfather used to cut the heads
Off chickens in the backyard
And he thought it was funny
When they would run after me
With their heads off
One time a headless chicken chased me
Right up the back porch steps
And beat itself against me
While I tried to escape through
A screen door that would not open
Because it was hooked on the inside
The dying chicken acted like a wind-up toy
Stuck in a corner
And it just kept thrashing against me
Until I became a different person forever
And the chicken ran down
And Grandma sped in from her garden
Like a fast ship
Her starched dress billowing like a sail
Otherwise mostly it was fun there
Except for when the peacocks wailed
Crazily in the night
And the house creaked and groaned
And I writhed under the
Hied-up bedclothes scared and sometimes
With chiggers burrowing
In my penis
Every summer I could look forward
To a nail-polished penis
The special remedy of the house
For these nasty no-see-ums
I never experienced anywhere else
But there at 2009 Clay Street
They were attracted to me
And they unfailingly established
Housekeeping in my penis
Rarely was I bitten anywhere else
It was a mind-bending horror
To suffocate bugs slowly that way
Until 6-12 came along later
Then my life through chemistry
Became a better thing
But too late for my overall future
There is no way of assessing
What lasting damage was wrought
By that chicken and the chiggers
What I might have become
without their rude attacks
Upon my space and privacy
And that is
the unvarnished truth
[dzd 8-24-98]
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