Where’s the Captain’s Song?

There’s a song in the Captain’s purse
I just gotta find it
before she snatches my hands away
I just gotta find it

There’s a wind in the Captain’s purse
I just gotta find it
before she orders my hands to shore
I just gotta find it

There’s a smile in the Captain’s sway
I just gotta find it
before she makes me walk the board
I just gotta find it
on the planks, in the galleys, you’ll know
you’ll find her yes

The Captain, she’ll sail your eyes to shore.

copyright 2009 © F.K. Needles — all rights reserved

This is a selection from the collection of poetry “Beer Songs for the Lonely” published by New Belleville Press and available in beautifully bound paper-back. You can buy it here on this website, or you can go to Alibris.com, Authorsbookshop.com, Book People in Austin, Texas, or Sonny’s Vintage also in Austin, Texas.

Road Trip Advisory!

Is anybody out there? More precisely, is anyone in Austin, Texas, preferably within the realms of this particular universe / dimension, interested in taking a road trip to St. Louis, Missouri? Maybe you just need a ride up there? Maybe you like sitting in a car for 36 hours? I don’t know. What I do know, is that I need to drive up to St. Louis before the end of the month of July. I do know that I am not entirely sure whether or not my car can make the trip – that bit of information will start to come to light after I take my car in for a check up. If it can make the trip, there is a working AC and there will be a large dog in the back seat. His name is Brutus, and he is very nice. However, he does have a tendency to slobber a lot and let out an atomic fart every once in a while. Other than that, he is totally harmless.

The reason for this trip? I need to deliver several boxes of books to Elva Maxine Beach who happens to live in St. Louis where she just bought a house. I could very well use some sort of shipping company, but I figure it would end up costing more or less the same amount, and I not only need to deliver lots of boxes filled with books to Maxine, I would also love to sit down with her, have a couple of beers, and have a conversation or two. You see, the boxes in question will be filled with hard copies and soft cover copies of the book “NEUROTICA,” a collection of short stories that Elva Maxine Beach wrote and that I published.

This trip will be an official New Belleville Press trip. Our first NBP road trip.

Who would like to take part of this historic occasion?

Contact me!

Francois Pointeau

Pancho wakes

Pancho, in spite
of himself
was forced out of his reveries:

grilling foods & fermenting
milk
skin pop popping gurgling
of a baby pig on the spit
apple pies
and praline ice cream
flambé if you please …

woken up
by a large growl
an intestinal brawl
a lament from his sleep
from somewhere
deep inside his bowels!

Pancho was hungry
for breakfast.

copyright 2009 © F.K. Needles — all rights reserved

Sketches of Pancho

1

Buried perhaps?
In a shallow grave or
a not so shallow one
underneath a slab of concrete?
Or perhaps
lost, in a grotto, a hole
someplace far away with stalagmites?
Or a far, far away land
maybe
with free-range chickens
and pork
fed on chestnuts and warm milk …

2

Pancho loved to eat,
he was a large man,
large as a barge,
so large that he stretched any room
he’d walk into, from inside out, he
overtook the air around him
compressed the breathable space
with his presence.

Pancho couldn’t help himself:

He loved to eat.

3 – Slingshooter

I was raised an egg-head.
Am now a lamppost.
Am planning on taking my retirement
inside an old smelly shoe-box
floating through outer space
heading towards Neptune
and beyond:
digitized, caramelized, and electrified …

Fire me away, baby,
into the computerized Far West.

4 – Small Treasure

Smuggled
after a long journey
finally here.

Pancho had forced himself
to stay away
until that morning, waking up
standing in his kitchen, scratching
his balls,
he decided:
This was the morning to be.

Inside the cold box
his latest treasure
rested,
at the risk of many lives,
jail time,
years of trial dates and lawyers;
he had done it.

Humble object, really:

A small wooden box,
round in shape
made of thin material.
It had a lid as deep
as the bottom part
just a little bigger
in circumference
for a tight fit.
The picture of cow and a farm
on the label.
It had small staples
holding its thin
cardboard-like walls
together.

The contents were wrapped
in white greasy paper, a bit
like butcher’s paper with two layers,
and carefully encased to a very snug fit.

The center was soft
to the touch.

Pancho was pushing down
with his right thumb
gently feeling the level of softness.

The sweet smell of a football player’s socks
slowly made its way to Pancho’s nose.

Ahh!
Penisilium Candidum, Camemberti!

copyright 2009 © F.K. Needles — all rights reserved

Writing on the Air

A small step for just about anybody, a large step for me. Okay, okay, that doesn’t really work. Nonetheless, on Wednesday evening, for the very first time in Francois Pointeau’s little life, I entered a radio studio and took part in a live show. I didn’t do much. I looked up a couple of advertisements, to be read live on the air by one of the two co-hosts. He asked me if I wanted to read them, and I shied out. Admittedly I was a bit intimidated by the large microphone, and I’m going to have to get used to it. I think this issue is not a real problem.

The show: Writing on the Air with Dillon McKinsey & Lee Davis, is a News & Public Affairs program of Public Radio station KOOP, Austin, Texas, and is broadcast on Wednesdays from 6 to 7 PM (CST) at 91.7 FM. They interview writers! Which, to me, is exciting. For the most part, I stood and watched and listened. Which is exactly what I wanted to do: Observe and take as much of it in as I could.

It think me and radio are going to have a fun relationship. I’m looking forward to take part in the show, and learn as much as I can from Dillon and Lee. I hope to be able to interview writers whom I enjoy reading, those few writers I have published and hope to publish, such as Elva Maxine Beach and Robin Blackburn, and possibly even be interviewed myself as F.K. Needles by the co-hosts.

Wherever this goes, I’m looking forward to it!

 

Fast-order chef

Louis the Fish was his name
why he was called that
nobody ever knew
but that’s the name he answered to
and that’s the name he wanted to hear
whenever anybody
uttered his name and he heard it.

Louis the Fish worked his grill
down in a burger joint
across the street
from my dad’s mechanic.

He didn’t talk much
being too busy most the time
either flipping burgers
or smoking a cigarette
or remembering
the orders he kept in his head.

He worked his grill
like a love song
to the only woman
he could ever think of loving
who had gone
and left him one night long ago
and his masterpiece
was the Philly cheese steak
though he’s hardly ever been out
of his trailer park
and definitely nowhere out of Texas
it was the best damn Philly
outside of Philly.

Nobody touched his grill
he’d light her up in the morning
and scrub her down at night
and nobody would ever have dared
to take that away from him
because he had talent
slithering like his namesake
and he had scales
from head to toe.

He’d fry you some onions and cheese
like a man desperate for something
like a man trying to prove something
like a man figuring on a joker
he swam in heat
which mattered non to him
like a fish and water
he swam in grease and tattered his grill
like a lost child he’d found
one night
and loved her since
brought her to three hundred degrees
lovingly
every day just to repeat himself
again and again.

One night
after he’d washed and scrubbed his grill
he stepped into the grease bin
underneath
and slid inside till he was gone.

Louis the Fish is gone
Louis the Fish is gone.

copyright © 2006 – 2009 F.K. Needles

This is a selection from the book “BEER SONG FOR THE LONELY” available in beautifully bound paper-back. You can buy it here on this website, or you can go to Alibris.com, Authorsbookshop.com, Book People in Austin, Texas, or Sonny’s Vintage also in Austin, Texas.

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