Atlanta (cont'd)

CNN had a show on Mariah Carey.
Then a show on the uprising in
the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII.
Interspersed throughout were ads for
consumer products to make one happier,
healthier, more youthful, sexier. Laxatives.
Garbage. Waste management, rather.
Environmental solutions. While the Polish underground
were fighting for their freedom against the Nazis,
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin were divvying up the map
of post-war Europe. We had already sold them down the river.
In what Zbigniew Brzezinski called a major compromise of principle.

Owen got good
at doing what he does
by doing it full-time,
living in used cars,
sleeping on somebody
else's floor. Then, and only then,
did he get married and have children.
Begin a family. My brother Bill was No. 1
on the freshman tennis team at FSU.
If he'd continued, he would have gotten
a full scholarship and gone on to play
professional tennis. Instead, with Lucky pregnant,
they both dropped out. Bill ran a filling station with
my father. She was a homemaker. Abortion on demand
was not an option, then, and they were too stupid to use
the birth control that was. Is an hour of pleasure worth
a lifetime of shame? How do you make it last an hour.
Written on an oar: I was, I no longer exist. Here drifted an hedonist.

The Fitness Center has a sign on the door
saying Out of Order and the heated swimming pool
has a thin sheen on the water of what Brenda says
is Afro hair-care product and I say is Afro perspiration
and natural Afro bodily secretions. Other than that,
the motel was acceptable. No loud music, no fist fights.
I've slept in worse. It's okay to swim in if you are
an African-American.

At a Waffle House
you can get hash browns
covered with grilled onions
and melted cheese and topped
with chili. Wear a sweater.
You can hang meat in there.
My only reservation is, a waffle comes
with spread, not butter, imitation maple syrup,
and non-dairy coffee-lightener in place of half-and-half.
If you sit where the waitresses congregate, you'll get
a minstrel show for free. Maury Povich meets Jerry Springer.
The dumbing down of American culture.
What do you expect instead--Schubert lieder?

The Waffle House at Pleasant Hill Road
and Shackleford in Atlanta was like the Magnolia Grill
in New Orleans: everybody knew what he or she
was doing. Many customers had on suits with name tags.
Some kind of convention. The white middle class meets
the colored aristocracy.

Garbage Band Productions got
the first table on the left
as you enter Winfield Hall.
The primo location. The one
Glori-Anne Gilbert had at Glamourcon '99.
Bouncing on the balls of her feet, the balls of her feet.
Needless to say, nobody asked me to pose nude with them.

I was a dancer, model, actress, and bikini-lawnmower-service
operator, I might have said. The rock band took exception to
my earplugs. I drew the proofreader's mark for delete, a slash with a loop,
through the character for b, in Garbage and left Productions as it was,
instead of replacing it with Books. Usually they call me Banned Books.
Banned Books. Like Chicken Little saying that the sky is falling in,
the sky is falling in, when it really isn't. When he's really crying wolf.
I read banned books, I don't produce them.

When I registered for my table,
the lady saw my Dread Clampitt T-shirt,
and said, "We love the CD." I sent them one
when I applied, and they said they played it in the office,
all the time. My reputation precedes me.