Toon Town Blues

More to the point, a little less direct, 

the vacant sign in the window fairly shouts: 

get off the sidewalk, this pavement’s been preserved 

for the dead and clearly departed. 

So this is what we’ve come to, our last stop 

in the reinvention of a hollowed out muddled nation, 

a backwater bayou in the midst of a scolytid infestation.  

On my morning lap along-around the sublunary boxes, 

I’m struck by the subtle differences, how it takes 

a century or two to illustrate the nuances 

Tönnies probably had in mind --

the boundary between the Gesamtkunstwerk and a Gemeinschaft 

is little more than the thin line divide 

between a Burger King and the Memphis crooner … 

a matter of scaling, how far you’re willing to travel 

for those supersized fries, a French tickler. 

You could have warned me about 

all that, shaved a little off 

the tearful reunion speech. Saved some 

of the grits for the grievances you knew 

I’d be having … 

You may be a little country, but 

I’m a whole lot city, and this --

this, sure ain’t some place in between.

Ken e Bujold

Reviews

[Betty Hermelee]

I think you're spoofing on crowded cities and good old Burger King... and no space to breathe; slim boundaries between cities and countryside or city to city...also a spoof on good old reunions...and I believe you don't much like waking up to another same old day, neither do most of us!
I grew up in Manhattan (now a jungle) and now live peacefully in the NC mountains, which by the way is stretching its limits....
nicely penned with a bit of sarcasm
Best, B

[Fabian G. Franklin]

Here we go wandering round the mulberry bush and getting above our raisins. Lord, Lord, that I was a "little country", although some days I'd settle for being a small Hawaiian island. I'm just hillbilly poet with an old goat's gruff, grizzled like a grizzly bear and refusing to leave my den (my bedroom actually). It's always a pleasure to read your work. I prefer my potatoes baked and slathered in sour cream with a steak on the side. I'll be on the lookout for Yakko, Wakko and Dot. Cheers, F.

[willweb]

Even though most of the locale referred to in this I am unfamiliar with (except the Burger King) this could be so many different areas here in the states. The line is constantly stretched to a limit it seems so that either or, the country fold or the city folk don't like what they find waiting for them at the start of the next new day. Very cool Ken.

[W. Barrett Munn]

“dead and clearly departed” is such a clever word play, kind of like a phantom rhyme of an amputated word.
I dig this one, Daddio

Winston