Preen

Carlos Danger
didn't have nothing on me.
Slicker than shit on porcelain,
once the scent of my seed
hit the street women gawked
as they walked into walls,
dropping their fake Gucci
bags while unhooking their bras
unleashing brickhouse boobies
with their bodacious bodies
going limp in longing
as I sauntered cock sure
down Fashion Avenue
finer than any matinee idol
flavor of the month.
Rob Lowe, Sly or Billy Dee,
none of these dudes
had more game than me.
Even bitches in heat turned tail
scratching and sniffing and digging
the bones that I be.

So that was the way
for maybe one fine day
thirty something years ago
after a fifty dollar haircut
with a gallon of mousse
on my dark chocolate mane,
Sergio Valente jeans certified
my butt bona fide prime choice cut.
A new job selling televisions
at Crazy Eddie's for five bucks
an hour, stolen cassettes and spiffs.
Hot damn my rod was as stiff
as rigor mortis on roadkill.

But ain't nothing as fickle as time is
with its vulnerability to economics
of voodoo and the influence
of the ugly things men do
and before I could say “recession,”
my hair receded going the way
of the wooly mammoth,
my butt busted denim
finding refuge in baggy sweats,
Crazy Eddie really was insane
dumping me on the dole till my dream
job of selling second hand
mattresses from the bed
of a beat up pick up truck
got me enough seed money
for an investment in tricked weed
to sell to suburban shit heads
with deep pockets and shallow sense.
Business been so slow since a pair
of one to threes, I can't even afford
a dime to get a blue pill
hard on no more.

I looked in the bathroom mirror
at the Citgo I use to disinfect
and I swear if I get me
some coin today I will strip
to my tighty whiteys and swagger
my ass off till the shit money can buy
wears off her sheen and I tap again
into the hustler's gene to keep current
on the devil's lien cause this motherfucker
was born to preen.