SAVE TRAVIS OR HE ONLY GETS LEAFY GREENS UNTIL I RELEASE HIM

I know, I know you all opened this page to read the words of the monster sized man from Amarillo and you wound up with me instead and as you sit there scratching your head wondering who the hell is this? I said to myself…well if you’re going to be that way then I should explain.

My name is Mark Durfee AKA The Walking Man and I live in Detroit. I am a poet without much of a sense of what poetry is, except poetic justice.

Four years ago there was a mayor in Detroit named Kwame Kilpatrick, he was busted for lying under oath during a lawsuit and in the course of events it was discovered that not only had he been schtuping his chief of staff, but about a half dozen other women, none of them named Carlita which happens to be his wife’s name. Now once he was tried and convicted and put on probation a kind Detroit multimillionaire named Peter Karmanos of Compuware fame and a few other kind multimillionaires paid to move Kwame, his wife, (whom Kwame may have started schtuping again because she probably put a leash on that hog,) and their kids to Dallas.

Seeing as Travis is always remarking on his size 6’5 280 and Kwame is exactly the same size, I could feel, with all that weight in Texas, the world shifting too far on its axis, so I traveled down to the Lone Star State and to decide which of these huge hunks of meat I needed to force back to the north to stop the earth from tipping too far. Well the short of it was after a great dirty, dusty and hours long fight, I (who am much smaller comparatively to Travis) but from Detroit, which comes with its own cache of dirty fighting, hog tied the big man from Amarillo and threw him in the back of his own pick up truck (my Honda was too small) and hauled him to what we affectionately call the “D.”

I could have hauled Kwame back but we have had enough of that grazer of feed store swine product. Besides by the time Travis escapes from the evil clutches of the D the feds will be hauling Kwame back here to face 25 or so indictments for running a criminal enterprise while mayor. And then the world as you have come to know it will be right again and the axis will be back in proper alignment. You could acknowledge your gratitude for me saving the planet from tipping over but I am humble enough to know you are grateful without forcing you to say it.

So here is the deal, you put up with one piece of my poetry, make a shit ton (that is a feed store measurement) of comments and I will release Travis and his pick up truck to go back to Texas but only because the Feds really are bring the Detroit Dog back here for a federal trial. In the interim you will have to click through to HERE to not only take yourself to the D but to check up on Mr. Erwin’s welfare seeing as I left him with only his hands unbound sitting at my rusty old computer in zip code (that is Postal Service talk that Travis told me about during our ride North) 48205; which is the most murderous zip code in the most murderous city in America.  So now you are aware of the deal and you and you alone have the power to save Mr. Travis Erwin not only from Detroit but if you fail and I have to keep him here I am changing his squirrel and quail stew diet to one of only leafy green vegetables.

There was a kid named Travis Erwin

who grew up in a place called Pearls Feed and Seed

run by a reprobate named Doyle Suggs.

Now Doyle or Mr. Suggs a wise man of three ex wives

(two he married twice)

was prone to espousing to Travis

a young fella’s need for “getting in the girl” advice.

Erwin, at the time not the brightest bulb in the chandelier,

tried ever trick Suggs suggested at age sixteen years

went every which way Doyle sent him to get his manhood vested.

AND THAT IS THE PREMISE FOR THE FEEDSTORE CHRONICLES

But by far the sweetest part of the book is that it comes to a right ending.

OK now that doesn’t count as the poem of mine, even though there is a countable iambic meter in there if someone knows how to count that shit. That is what we call a hook so you will spend your time purchasing and reading Travis’ book. Though it’s not Bukowski, in a prose sort of way The Feedstore Chronicles comes close to some of Hanks poetry.

Now to torture you my work is below, it’s an old piece but one of my favorites. It appears in my second book of poetry which you can buy from me if you want it.

Cobblestone Kisses II

I saw a shoeless girl,

about 4.

Dancing on cobblestones

in pure bliss.

Each and every cobble

she touched gave her bare feet

a smiling loving kiss.

I wondered as I watched

Where she got the joy

to dance like that;

fluttering dress,

twirling, blessed

mindless bliss,

in a place so lacking in romance.

Dance though she did,

on and on laughing, loving, living

while she had the chance,

to be dancing carelessly to a music

only she could hear.

I wished I could be that way again

mindlessly joyful with cobbles dear

kissing my bare feet

soothing my mind taking my fear.

Wishing for a childhood

not knowing what lay ahead.

Better yet I’d like the freedom to be

dancing now this moment, this day

letting the smooth stones

take my care away.

Laughter and smiles come

so easy to children loved,

with nothing amiss

all the little ones should

be dancing and twirling in joy

as the cobblestones deliver

their loving bare feet kindest kiss.

© M Durfee

9-2-05

12-22-09(rev)