The Skinny
Walking To and Fro
By: Charles Giuliano - Apr 20, 2018
The Skinny
Entering the room
A lively gathering
One kind or other
Drinks and snacks
Folks milling about
Chirps of chatter
Chips and dips
The usual small talk
Veneer of power and privilege
Sense of entitlement
Just being there
Among the hoi polloi
Smug sense of belonging
Or perhaps not
Raised as an orphan
By busy parents
As I told Jose
The other day at lunch
Too much but never enough
Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic
Like in the robing room
Before annual convocation
Ho hum university
Anywhere USA
Penguin Island
Swell of Orwellian
Strutting about
Parades of professors
Hoods and hats
Blue for Yale
Oxford or Cambridge
Red for Harvard
On such occasions
Looking about for
Someone like me
Straight old white guys
Their proper wives
Wrinkled gracefully
Sipping oaky chardonnay
Milk of the masses
Sherry before supper
Country club stuff
My winter of chianti
Cheap and potable
Like me déclassé
Opaquely Italian
Not quite white
Enough for refined company
What’s worse Sicilian
A made-up man
Mob psychology
Gangster chic
The other half not
Thick and stumpy
From peasant stock
Lived on potatoes
Working the sod
Emerald Island
Dublin with stout
Celebrated my birthday
Such a merry night
Music and mirth
Astrid dancing about
Knocking back black pints
Feeling the Mick in me
Blarney gift of gab
How to make sense
Born in the U.S.A.
Such roiling of race
Burn baby burn
Ranked and filed
Rooted into us
From birth in a land
Diverse with girth
Fly in the buttermilk
He says with a laugh
Making light of the horror
The horror, the horror
Kurtz in the cave
Piles of little arms
Okinawa, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan
Boots on the ground
Old men make wars
Slaughter our children
Now Assad and Syria
Mission accomplished
Tweeted Commander in Sleeze
Corpses of Wounded Knee
Scent of magnolia
The gallant south
Black bodies hung from poplar trees
Custer died for your sins
Gone with the wind
Lillian my black mother
Listened to joy and pain
Cookies after school
Growing up absurd
Nausea of that room
Any time anywhere
Where everyone looks alike
Even jazz clubs
Miles, Mingus and Trane
Played with love supreme
Heart and soul
For ofay hipsters
At least on the outside
Heart of darkness
Rage and turmoil
Nausea of small talk
Seeking deeper dialogues
Why race matters
In the DNA of
Being an American
Where nothing is as it seems
Women walking to and fro
Speaking of Michelangelo
For tough shit Eliot
One of the better Italians