Birds Of A Feather by Jim Senetto

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Birds Of A feather

I look at the lady killer
poet belching Lothario,
out of an amused eye
and giggle, through
a Budweiser burp,
at the fresh washed fool
as the skirts drift to me,
a baggy kneed,
whisker bound
goat
with the soul of a toad
but the constitution
of a cowboy riding
spur wearing, six gun toting
good fuckin hombre.

And they know,
those ladies,
I’ll write about those nights
as they pull up their evening’s
gratitude
or just maybe they’ll
take one of those cold ones
and with a Mickey Mantle swing,
add a scar on top of the scar
my life has already left.

Look at him looking at me,
that nose a street-map of
wrong turns, speeding through
red light districts
petting the alley cats with tufts
of boxed colored fur
and for what?
an evening of debauchery,
forgotten names
morning breath remembrance…
lucky his cadence is strong
the words talking
through fingers
rather than twisted whiskey lips..

I watch the joust of jesters,
safe in quiet corners
and what is spoken under
dried lip breath, fades in admiration;
the good, the bad, the ugly
circle outside the written take
and when all is said and done,
a glass is toasted at the stroke
of midnight,
or maybe not.

blackpooljimmyAPJim Senetto about Jim Senetto

My father was quiet; loving, provider but quiet…I never knew a grandfather, his side, or his brother lost at 28 and I was told not to ask. So quiet I was…me, the quiet one, second echelon in a group of friends…quiet in the confessional booth I was brought to…why tell a stranger, in a dark booth sitting behind mesh, my woes, thinking it just might be his woes were worse than mine (I’ve later learned, some in collars should have sat on the other side of that mesh window, confessing). I was drafted in ’66, taught how to kill strangers and my mouth began to question why and with some friends now dead from bullets of insanity, I became alive, vowing never to be as quiet as my father. He had his reasons, I’m sure, old school and all of that, but I had to break the chain. Art, photography, music, poetry is my voice and it’s all fair game…say it loud, some will listen and that is good enough for me.

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