270 Words
I was driving east on Alton’s beltway
headed for the mall library?
when a ginormous white teen boy and his tiny black girlfriend
calmly held hands and stepped onto the highway
and crossed not looking left or right?
Cars didn’t crash?
They skidded tight, swerved and honked?
I was one of the honk-ees?
Cool Boy, backward-sideways-baseball capped,
after they had reached the other side,
circle-flipped us off?
“Rapscallions,” I muttered to myself.
I drove to the mall and got some books?
I exited into the walkway,
and here came skip-school Cool Boy and Impassive Girl?
CB was six foot, weighed about three-ten,
his baggy pants belted to his ample pale thighs (plaid boxers)?
IG wore casual clothes under a hoodie;
she was short, about ninety pounds, listless:
Coo-love-goodie!
I calmly pointed out they were, uh, jackass teens—
could have been dead teens?
The dumb asses hadn’t counted on Oldboy from the highway
coming to the same place they were headed for?
Cool Boy gallantly shoved Sweetie Pie behind him,
hard enough that she stumbled?
I can’t quote word for word
Cool Boy’s (remember, he was white) tirade?
Enjoy a Whitman’s Sampler:
“I am gonna f–k you up, you old man you-b—h?
You talk to mah lady dat way, b–ch?
I will f–k you ten different ways
and den you will suck mah dick—dig?
Fear me. Fear me, m—-rf—er?
Are you scared, b–ch? You niggah!”
Impassive Girl looked at the floor.
I, “niggah,” (“Recklass,” actually)
broke out in laughter,
CB and his evil-eye baby girl IG,
doubtless indignant at my effrontery, huffed off?
(The above, minus the title and words before it, is two hundred seventy words, in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, 150 years ago today. We have learned so much, come so far—too far, right? God bless Abraham Lincoln and God bless the Un-united States of America.)
