Joey Cloudy online

My Goth Name Is Becky 

a Blues poem for Sarah Vowell. 

I sing the suburban American girl electric blues. 

I sing the red haired, 

white skinned, 

blues eyed girl 

bottom shelf vodka tonic ice blues. 

I sing the suffragette, subjugated, suppression blues. 

Harmonic wail of the locomotive steel slide upscale dive bar blues. 

Twenty first century Deep Ellum condominium blues. 

Even though I win I lose to the blues. 

I sing the Crypto bro blues, 

khaki pants and a polo blues, 

penny loafers no socks blues, 

No laces in my shoes blues.

Piano man blues, 

BBW bare back shot breaking Becky blues. 

Nightly news 

daily blues. 

 I have learned   

how to win by losing 

Ten years too late. Atop  

a mountain of imaginary  

broken keys and lost hearts. 

I sit bowed with age,  

Humbled by crippled clocks 

And a tiny poem.  

You 

don’t deserve  

To be lost on ashen  

Broken bone of an ancient  

City, surrounded by self-inflicted scar tissue, 

adrift in type O negative, an aged, pickled pariah. 

Get the fuck outta here with your nine toed woman!