Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame 2002

Wouldn’t Joey Ramone have loved
to have lived to see this?

Wouldn’t he have circled the day,
written down the address,

even if the driver with the boys
were coming to pick him up

again and last and on time
to be inducted into the Rock-n-Roll

Hall of Fame?  Probably
the first time he’d ever visited.

He would have I bet you
lay flat on his back on the carpet

of the condo his manager bought
him when the cash ran like a trout stream

knowing it wasn’t your handprints
they were after:  no gold nude

for the mantle, or a globe or Victrola.
Not even money or a gold record —

“Man,” he would sit up thinking,
“they just want my guitar.”

Pulchritude

You’re sexy as hell the guy on the next barstool
said. I wanna know, how’s that sexy? It’s hot?
Cicero knew it in Claudius Pulcher, so grotesquely beautiful
out from his saffron dress, from his headdress,
from his Cinderella slippers and his purple ribbons,
from his dereliction, from his lust.
You’d dress me up like a tart
or in a little devil
costume, complete
with horns and pitchfork,
and then say you’re hot.

I’d dress you up like a fireman.
And I’ll be on fire.

Call It History

In tragedy, you die.
In comedy, you marry
Tell me, who wrote this system?

Considering the options,
I killed parts of myself
every time I said I do,

which was never funny
particularly when I did not anymore.

No bliss outside of marriage –
the system directs out of decency,
preferring the conjugal
to lusting adulterous or flirting.
Yes, even the flirting.

What about – you marry for comedy
and divorce to be born
again, twist of sacrament?

Call it history.

Leah M. Hughes is from Dalton, Georiga.  She attended Oglethorpe University, Georgia State, and Queens University of Charlotte. She educates and writes in the metro-Atlanta area, where she enjoys copious reading, her three dachshunds, gardening, and live music.