The boys would be okay from the time school let out
until Brenda got home from work. When both of us worked,
they were latch-key children. I was a latch-key husband.
Sometimes when they got home I was walking on the beach.
Emerson called Thoreau the Captain of a Huckleberry Party.
That was me. Not much partying, chez Jack the Raver.

Did I have a coterie of steadfast readers
I called the Buzzard Cult yet? I don't remember.
I know I was working to the band, instead of to the
strip-club audience. They came in to masturbate.
Not listen to a would-be social-satirist pontificate.

Who did I think I was? Lenny Bruce?
Lick your leg for a quarter, lady?
My influences were Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, and Lenny Bruce.
Jack Kerouac. French New Wave filmmakers. Redd Foxx and Lord Buckley.
Brother Dave. Lichty. Grin and Bear It. Sydney J. Harris. Strictly Personal.