This is the first poem we recorded at Open Path Music studio—with Tim Bulkley on drums—toward a CD that became titled Rock-n-Rowel (2005), one of two disks, actually (the other, Collisions Of Reckless Love), during a year’s labor of love with Producer-Musicians, Gordon Stevens, Tim Volpicella, Lee Ray, Scott Sorkin, and a troupe of additional virtuoso players.  Since the poems were not printed in accompanying booklets, I’m splitting hairs when I suggest that though it is a poem with “spoken-word presence,” it still qualifies as a “Homeless Poem”?   “Home” being defined as a printed page in a book?  Therefore, it’s a “ghost poem”—a poem you could hear but, until now, not see?  This piece delighted dear friend, Trish Pedroia, who we lost last November.   I’m including it here primarily in her memory, as well as because my outrageously popular poem “Why I Like BUTTE!” deserves a sequel, and this is the closest I’ve come so far.

The Day Beelzebub Gave His Jezebel A Hotfoot . . .

it was 52 below zero in Butte, Montana
where they were marooned, after the hell-hole
it took them an eternity to drive up through
froze over, their fire-engine-red Firebird
vapor-locking to a frigid halt
as they unwittingly drove beneath Our Lady
Of The Rockies—Snow White with an attitude,
all 90 blessed feet and 80 steel virgin tons of her
standing vigil over the Berkeley Pit.
                                                    Red,
the mechanic at Red’s Firebrand Texaco
tells the devil, she ain’t firin’, no spark,
Bub, and I’ll be go-to-hell
if I can savvy what the hitch is
in your git-along-little-dogie,
not knowing just how go-to-hell he’ll truly be
if he doesn’t get humorless Lucifer
back on the road, pronto. But how in hell
was Red supposed to know? The shrewd master
of disguise—tail, horns, cloven feet,
pointy ears and all—looked purt-near like most
everyone else bundled-up and ruddy-jowled
on just another colder-than-hell Butte
December afternoon.
                               Hell-o, HELL-O!
Red heard ol’ Diablo losing his cool
on the phone, deader than hell
for the seventh day straight. Lord only knows
when they’ll get the lines back up—ought to
change their handle from Ma Bell to Hell’s Bells,
quips Red from underneath the hotrod
up to Satan, so much fire in his eyes
Red no longer needs his trouble light, nor does he
fully comprehend the severity of his faux pas
as he rubs it in doubly deep with his
emphatic refrain, Lord ONLY knows! Followed-up with:
this cold spell sure has been raisin’ holy hell
around here this Christmas, and…JeeZUZ H. Key-RICE-st
on a crooked crutch…. Red didn’t miss a beat,
oblivious to how timely was his exclamation,
Beelzebub’s mood suddenly up-swung
with Red’s good news of the netherworld’s
crippled-up nemesis.
                              Hell-A-loolya
and here’s to ya, my fumin’ friend—I BY GOD
got your pickle pegged: your cataclysmic conundrum
mustta rubbed against your firewall, overheated,
and burnt your muffler valve
ALL TO HELL. Hope you’re packin’ a fire
extinguisher in this beast. Helluvanote, Bub,
but thank heaven I just happen to have the parts
to git you the hell-’n’-gone outta here. Beelzebub bit
hard his barbed tongue to keep from saying
what a godsend!
                        By now,
Beelzebub is in dire need
of a Hades’ Boilermaker—a case of Heet
gasoline deicer and a 3-fingers’ (all he’s got)
shot of Habanero Chile Pepper Schnapps. Back,
at long last, to the B&B (he thought it stood for
Beelzebub and Babe) he finds his beloved
bedazzling behemoth redhead buried
eyeball-(she’s only got one) deep
beneath electric blankets turned on all the way
to HOT. She’s snoring her erotic snore
which brings ol’ Beelzebub’s blood to a brisk
molten lava boiling until he can’t
say NO to his own temptations
when he catches a glimpse of her horny yellow
foot sticking through the wrought iron rails
and arousing him all to hell. 
                                        That day
Beelzebub gave his Jezebel a hotfoot,
the matchbook read River Styx
Hot Springs—Nether World, and Oh God!
Oh God! did Beelzebub’s Jezebel ever have one
jump-start of an orgasmic jolt
that made the San Andreas Fault
(their second favorite vacation spot)
quaking 9.8 on the Richter Scale
seem like an infinitesimal jiggle, a flinch,
a dust mite’s climax. 
                              As they jubilantly sped
out of Butte, two helmeted apparitions
dressed horn-to-hoof in Halloween orange
and packing firearms for the late elk hunt
passed them on Hellcat snowmobiles
making Beelzebub lonesome for his own
florescent bed of coals. And you can bet
your most diabolic act of defiance—
like that magnetic glow-in-the-dark
Saint Christopher medal sly ol’ Red slapped up
under The Wicked One’s dash—
that not even 666 eons of global warming,
complete with 666 hell ninos
plus 2 free passes to the Helsinki bathhouse
could ever tempt Beelzebub
to make his Jezebel, Helena,  come…here…again.

                            For Trish Pedroia—in memory