Caddy Shacks

We’re not the jet set, we’re the old Chevrolet set
 -George Jones

Wanderers above the misty sea
who sieg heil the blind par three off the eighth tee

reluctantly shank an open face club,
a sand wedge inflicting much wooded hubbub.

Dimpled ball aloft forty seven degrees
strikes dead a deer and caroms off many trees.

They all run away,
Art God especially in dismay,

his shot to clear his societal debt
flushed down the proverbial toilet.

Head down he digs a big hole,
a hypnotizing spiral of a time tunnel

jjourneying past the center of the Earth
the long way to Chinatown seeing Suzie Wong giving birth.

Thirty blocks away he surfaces up a dry dirt road
and recognizes the hitched chrome corrugated abode

belonging to Kim Mee Chow
who gives him chow,

a one-one thousand, two-one thousand then flip sirloin steak
to soothe his emptiness, his hunger, his ache.

Outside coarse and hoarse aproned moms shout
at skinny dogs and naked toddlers running about

while inside old ladies and old men squashed
unair-conditioned atop vaulted cement sidewalk,

telephone each other hourly bitching,
gossiping or exchanging trivial weather talk.

Back of the yards the smell of dead meat
still hangs in the midsummer heat

while long time neighbors feud
throughout the day

as the wind huffs and puffs
and blows the aluminum siding away.

Lupus-stricken Art God takes relief,
drops an X-out and nods

pantomiming Johnny Carson
swinging at imaginary sod.

His mighty whiff threw his back out of whack
the loud crack of spine the sound of a backfiring Cadillac

Down he went a pain in his ass
from the ricocheted nine iron released from his grasp

that whipped past Mo
three yards ahead in the alley rough

a blow low enough
it might have plunked him right in his stuff

and slingshots into a bending bush
only to boomerang back into his toosh.

Next door the pot-bellied off-duty cop screams to his wife,
"Call 911!" gesturing wildly with his dull barbecue knife

while he ambles to the fallen double foes
stumbling ala Rob Petrie, not so nimble on his toes.

Damn if he doesn’t lose his balance and finally pratfalls
unfortunately right on the heretofore "lost" golf balls

Way down the street sirens blare loudly
as all the drunken WWII veterans salute wounded proudly.