This is the second in a series of poetry posts by FTB ranter Laurence Tenenbaum in anticipation of his spoken-word performance at the Montreal Infringement Festival next Tuesday, June 21st at the Concordia co-op bookstore. This week, three more offerings. Will you get to hear them live, too? Well, there’s only one way to find out..
Blue Bonnets
Well, straight out of the gate,
I’m a little too late
They don’t race horses here anymore.
The exitement used to build
An audience thrilled
Though gambling and cheating were common
A trip to the past
Where gangsters and mobsters
And my uncle used to bet
On who’s horse would win it
And whose horses wouldn’t
And all of them were
Thoroughbred.
Now the building sits empty, abandoned, alone,
The parking lot is filled with shopping malls now
No more stables,
No more horses,
The city owned it for it’s last few years
But now
Bankrupt.
Maybe somebody won too big a prize.
Nothing Personal
It’s hard not to take it personally
When you keep attacking my person
Harass and harangue
Waste your time and mine
All for a debt
Related to a crime
Which I am the victim
But I Cannot prove
No matter the outcome
I’m set up to lose
Destruction of my integrity
Attack against my being
And for defending myself:
Terminal sentence.
I’m not supposed to take it personally,
But you attack my person
You attack my people
You attack me.
Depression
Constant frustrations, annoyances, and woes
Calls to remind me of all my owes
Evil attacks against my life
Forced to live alone, without children, or wife
No matter what I do, it seems
That I can never win
To most people I’m a loser, before I even can begin
And I live in a world
Where I’m forced to compete
Against a million billion people, who are all better than me
And then there is the fact, that I’m not ‘Pure Laine’
And then there is the fact that I’ve been fired again,
And then there is the fact that I mask my misery to myself
And then there is the fact that I’ve been sitting on the shelf
And the fact that I’ve been dieing inside
And the fact that they want to beat my hide
And then there are all the traps I’ve fallen into
All the baits I’ve taken
The lives I’ve shaken,
And all for what?
35 and a half years, and nothing to show for it
From the time I was small, I wanted to go for it
But always found out that I couldn’t
Since someone else beat me to it
Or I couldn’t go through it,
Usually because I was just too broke to do it
Sometimes I feel like I can’t even afford the things that are “free”
Especially when surrounding it is something with a fee
Constant frustrations, annoyances, and woes,
Call to remind me of my owes.
