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Babs and Sheila’s Last Night Out
Babs and Sheila motor mouth
Hopped on the fourteen bus
Sweater puppies cinched up top
A couple sizes plus
Sheila blows a cell phone gale
And massacres her gum
Babs just to get downtown
And start a nightclub run
Kyle and Jimmy ain’t so bright
They drink at Ace o’ Spades
Kyle he’s got the boots on tight
And Jimmy packs a blade
Every bouncer knows the boys,
They bring in half the work
All the east side cops would love
To give their chains a jerk
‘Evenin’ ladies’, Kyle says
Or something just as lame
Knocking ivory balls about
The girls joined in the game
Babs likes independent guys
Of non-apparent means
Plus she noticed straight away
How Kyle filled his jeans
Jimmy doesn’t say too much
He likes to keep it cool
Sheila figures Jim’s OK
But no one she would do
Kyle and Babs are glassy eyed
Before the eight ball’s sunk
Chest to chest by closing time
Both off-the-meter drunk
Sheila yaps incessantly
In Jimmy’s empty face
Stumbling through the parking lot
They head to Kyle’s place
Just a wooden shingle shack
Behind an eight-foot hedge
Fifteen minute dirt road ride
Not far from river’s edge
Single bedroom dingy blue
By kitchen full of trash
Kyle and Babs with cigarettes
Slipped in there lightning fast
Babs’ a big girl, Kyle is hot
And Sheila knows the score
Its too late to chaperone
Two drunkards anymore
Simple male reckoning
Says Sheila pairs with Jim
After all its only fair
He gets a little trim
Sheila isn’t quite so drunk
To flat out misbehave
Plus she knows what Jimmy is
Not gentleman, but knave
Now alarm bells come unstuck
Code yellow paints her head
Sheila aims to end this night
Alone in her own bed
That’s the kind of dreary news
That Jimmy hates to hear
Hatching up a different plan
He cracks a couple beer
‘Just this last one’ Sheila says,
‘Then walk me to the station’
Jimmy gets testosterone
Mad dog inclinations
From the shower Sunday noon
Hair still wet and stringing
Babs picks up the panic call
That’s got her cell phone ringing
‘Where the hell has Sheila gone?’
‘By God, you’d better know!’
Sheila never made it home
Babs takes the stunning blow
Sentenced twenty-five to life
Is what the courtroom read
‘Christ, that woman talked too much’
That’s all that Jimmy said
[May 11, 2006]
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The
Poetry of Daniel Harrison