Two And Two: Selected and New Poems

Our Americano

Our Americano An apple-pie Americano—attaboy!—got the ax for being asleep at the switch and back-talking his backasswords ball-busting boss. Though our Americano was a bit of a blowhard, he wasn’t a bad egg. His being bagged by his boss made him feel like he had belly-flopped in his birthday suit. Basically, he was over a barrel, with the bejesus knocked out of him, and no matter how hard he beat his brains out, he remained betwixt and between. What if he was a bozo bullshit artist who couldn’t see the big picture? Maybe, he thought, he should bootlick, belly up to his big shot of a boss. He sat in the can thinking about being canned. He decided he was no comma-counter, no company man. He chugalugged a beer and chowed down Chinese. His chips being so down led him to the cathouse where he carried a torch for a cat’s-meow call girl named Nicole who could do one crazy cement mixer. Though he wasn’t her cup of tea, the cutie pie didn’t give him the cold shoulder. Instead, she cased out his dick and poured him a double, which made him feel less like a dead duck. After his night out, he was dead broke, a desperado divvying up his double-decker sandwich . He had one last chance—his hot-diggity demo he took to a doozy of a deejay in a dinky a.m. station. The deejay said, “You’re no dreamboat, but you sound damn fine.” Our Americano knew these were his dog days, but he was an eager beaver on the eighty-eight. He hoped elbow grease and an Elvis haircut could get him to Easy Street, but meanwhile he moved into a flea-trap flophouse full of fancy pants and floozies. He took forty winks and dreamed of being the filthy rich, fashion-plate, fair-haired boy who finagled a fast buck with his forty-five. His fans were finger poppers who flipped their lids whenever they heard his name. He liked living in a fishbowl where he could futz around in a five-and-dime and— gee whiz!—googols of gussied-up glamour girls would go gaga. He’d take a gander at their great gams, then make goo-goo eyes—each one would have Nicole’s face, giving him the go-ahead. He was on a gravy train, his groovy gold-star gimmick a gas. Then the gall! His god-awful alarm clock and the realization his dream was a 19 gag gift. He was back to being a greenhorn again, a goose egg, a goof-off, a goon. He was back to the grind, a hayseed, a half-assed horse’s ass, a hack. A hammy ham-and-egger in hand-medowns who’d had it, who’d have to pass the hat in hopes that highfalutin hoitytoity higher-ups who lived high on the hog would have a heart and give him a hand-out. He needed a headshrinker for his hang ups, a headhunter who was also a hot sketch. If only he could get a job as a hubba-hubba heartthrob. His hell-hole apartment was giving him the heebie-jeebies. Just when he was thinking that maybe he should ixnay the ivory thumper dream and iron out things with his icky former boss, the deejay called to say that our Americano was in like Flynn, the he was the new “it boy.” He hit the jackpot. Jailbait Janes and Joe Colleges alike were jazzed up over the jingle-jangle of his forty-five. He owed it all to the deejay, the jim-dandy who saw the jism in his jitterbug. No longer Joe Blow, no longer John Doe, our Americano jumped off the deep end and put his John Hancock on a contract agreeing to jazzy jam sessions and keeping up with the Joneses. He traded in his jalopy for a Jaguar with a jazzy radio and jiffy power steering—the whole kit and caboodle. He was suddenly kingpin. Kids from Kentucky to Kazoo were keen for his new LP, the one where he lollygagged like a loverboy on the cover, a long drink of water turned into a lone-wolf ladies’ man by his agent. Loudmouth lounge lizards, lovebirds, letches, and lowlifes on the lam all learned the lingo of our livewire loco Americano. Madison Avenue masterminded a memo to make sure he was...