from STASHU KAPINSKI GETS LUCKY for the St. Joseph the Worker Day issue:
ENOUGH OR TOO MUCH
I figure it's tough for everybody
even if you ain't interested
in climbin' the pyramid.
Tough enough to keep your head
in one piece when everybody's tramplin'
everybody, screamin' for more.
I ain't got much
but what I got
gotta be enough.
GET A EDUCATION, MEATBALL
There's this university in town
but I don't go anymore.
They say I'm a meatball.
You know, it's the way to get ahead.
But I already got a head,
don't need another.
To tell the truth, I'd like to give it back.
Don't need nothin' but nothin'.
I know what I'm talkin' about here.
I read them books, you hear.
They's just messin' with your dreams,
get you so you don't know from a hole ina ground.
You can't sleep at night,
you gotta do this, gotta do that,
you gotta want this an' that.
The girls there ain't too bad to look at,
I gotta give you that, if you know what I mean,
but their heads is all filled with screws,
an' not the kind I got in mind, you know.
Forget it! I'm back in my ole neighborhood,
real cozy like. There ain't no pressure, no way
you gotta try to be what you ain't.
An' besides, there's a bar on every block
Stashu Kapinski Strikes Out
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Stashu Kapinski, the guy who wrote these poems, is a sometime bum living in my skin. He doesn't get out much, but when you hear (and smell) him, you know he's noone else. He's pissed about a lot of things--being out of work for so long, the steel mills in Pittsburgh closing down, getting old, the price of beer, you name it. But he hasn't given up. There are still moments when he feels like the King of Polish Hill.
From 1986-1996, Joseph Lisowski was Professor of English at The University of the Virgin Islands; he is now teaching at Elizabeth City State University. His detective fiction novel, LOOKING FOR LISA, has just been published by Fiction Works |
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