You're Looking at Country
When them cotton trees get rotten,
You cain’t pick very much cotton.
If I cain’t vote for Huey Long,
I’ll sit right down and write a song.
Country music has its themes,
the stuff that Big O saw in dreams:
prison, railroads, pickup trucks,
where kids are Billybobs or Hucks.
It’s telephones and wrangling steers,
and cheating hearts and chandeliers:
you’ll know just where I’m coming from
when I say, best of all is Mom.
But shorter, better: briefer, sweeter –
that much I have learned from Skeeter.
No necklace, then – just one fine pearl
(don’t want to leave you haggard, Merle!)
Ridge’s shoes are derelict.
Looking down, he says, “You picked
a fine time to leave me, loose heel!”
A lonesome whistle – gamblers deal.
Is Ridge in Fulsom? Nothing new,
but headed where the grass is blue.
Let the Long-Hairs twist and shout –
Ridge is fixed on busting out.
Once free, he finds a Travelodge,
unseen, hot-wires a jacked-up Dodge:
FM playing, wailing sax,
Ridge now needs to cross the tracks.
He’s almost reached his side of town.
Speed up! The bar is coming down!
A woman, dressed up to the nines,
on foot, steps on the railroad lines!
Thus Ridge fulfilled the Country rules
(not taught in fancy East-Coast schools):
the long-term loser fought the law,
but crashed into his loving Maw!
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