Two

Two of my favorite Talent poems:


The Wag Ted

The wag, the same one you've heard about,
the best and worst customer in Tex’s Tavern,
once said: “The best thing about Talent is that
it takes none to live here.  The land is enough,
the Rogue is rough and the freeway, need  you
to go somewhere, is right over there.”

The wag was tight and nodded in the wrong direction.
But he went on anyway:  “The fields are green, though
often brown, and the sheep are easy and fearless; the
beer is warm and cheap at Tex’s Tavern, and Lizzie
DeLay is reckless—but at bottom, wink, wink, a doll.”
The wag’s droll friend Rex Dern said, “Ted, it may be

Time to go.”  Lizzie, better at directions than the wag,
lifted her head and then a brow; toward the door
her red eyes did roll. “Poor Ted, he’ll soon be dead,”
Tex announced one day as he counted his money.
“He’s bleeding me dry, and though he may look spry,
the booze will soon kill him—and if it doesn't, I will.”


Morning Coffee

The morning coffee drinkers at Talent’s Noble Coffee
are friends and experts in many fields.  Or they claim to
be.  Political thinkers on occasion, they’re reluctant to
yield the floor when a debate is in session.  A door
salesman named Harry Reems—he changed his name
after the porn star—is also an astrologer, a horn player
and a former friend of the “disgraced chef,” Paula Deen.

A retired biologist, Clay Hicks calls himself a philologist
and plays with words night and day.  He has joined
Dianetics, has written two self-published polemics that
no one has read and keeps one great friend in Noble
Coffee—himself. Coffee, a known diuretic that settles
wrong in the intestines of the naively political, makes
Noble Coffee a fine enclave every morning, a haven for
coffee fiends who, despite everything, sometimes get along.


TS