i wrote this in 1991. Reading it tonight, i would like to proclaim i have never used any drugs. i suspect i rewrote it in 1991 from something i had written earlier, perhaps in my Newport, Rhode Island days, which seemed to spur my thoughts in an…er, independent direction. As i read it tonight, i kept thinking about the grad student who taught my spring class of English 101 at Vanderbilt. She was tall, rather gangling, and the thing i remember most about her is her wearing those sweat pad things on her arm pits underneath her blouse . She demanded we find symbolism in poems, which i thought was a bit unfair to the author. i’m guessing she became a college English professor and has written a number of scholarly books and a couple of major novels. i do not remember her name. But i still think poems are what the author intended them to be, and your interpretation is yours.

quick draw jack
got sacked
by a damsel in disguise;
she blew out his eyes;
fallen arches
on skid row tree
plumbed down
on jack’s head;
not sacked,
he’s dead;
sally jean
was the girl
who wore her ankles high,
never did deny
her lack of coy,
which did annoy
the horde of roaring thousands
eyeing for the goal line
stand,
but
quick draw jack
was dead;
the green went six ahead;
quick draw was sacked,
not dead.