ST. LOUIS SUNDAYS
YELLOW SLICKERS
Yes, that’s what it was. Wet, liquid, watery H20 from
the dark, gray, cumulonimbus clouds above.
God’s way of telling South St. Louis, hey, you are filthy!
Angel’s tears, falling on the heads of wretched, tormented
souls of south St. Louisians. Bathing the skyscrapers and
ghettos. The limousines and the V.W’s. The statue of ex—
Cardinal great, ”Stan the Man” and the ex-cons. Baptizing
the dust covered city with no hope of salvation for the
wicked town.
Hydrating the dehydrated flora and fauna that
took it all for granted. Dripping on rose petals and running
down to the roots.
Sprinkling turtle’s shells and running in to
silver ponds.
Splashing on top of everything, and running,
running, running down to where gravity demanded. Fading and
blurring the print and pictures of old newspapers and
magazines left and forgotten in the city dump.
Refreshing, regenerating, life-giving rain. Penetrating
every crack and crevice. Giving a soggy eviction notice to the
ants, spiders and other bugs that lived like tiny apartment
dwellers under the streets and sidewalks.
Copious showers, drowning the woes, heartaches and
sorrows of the pathetic misfits of old decrepid, south St. Louis.
Rain, rain, go away? Is that the poem we want to say? O,
nay, nay I pray, that the virgin waters stay and stay, and
never flow away.
The Mississippi river drank like a sailor on leave, in Guam, on
a Saturday night, after eating two bowls of real salty pretzels.
As the deluge continued and the raindrops shimmered
on spider webs, and on illuminated windshields, and on
ancient Glirkazoid warship portholes, the young, innocent,
shrimp-like school children departed from their comfy
homes and sloshed on to the first day of school.
For little ole me, it was the first day of kindergarten.
(I actually thought this would be a flower garden where
everyone was kind.) (I was wrong.)
Mommy deserted me with no survival equipment!
My shoes were untied, my butt-hole itched, (that is the
supreme itch), my nose was bleeding from picking it.
(Remember the time when you were picking your nose in class,
and it started bleeding, and the teacher asked you what
happened, and you said, I don’t know, it just started bleeding
on it’s own.) Oh, yeah, right. You don’t remember. Right.
Anyway, to top it off; It was pouring down rain and we were
all standing in a huge building that had a shiny wooden floor.
Someone called it a “jim”. (I thought it looked more like a “Wilt”.)
But all of this was nothing. The very first and terrible
and awful thing was about to happen that would permanently
warp my sweet little unadulterated brain.
Picture this in your mind.
Every single child was wearing a perfect, little, bright,
yellow slicker with a hood, except for me.
I was wearing a brown, soaking wet, cloth jacket.
How did this happen? Did I somehow miss the great yellow
slicker giveaway? Was this a cruel joke concocted by someone in the administration to humiliate me before I had the opportunity to display my superior intelligence in front of my peers?
I don’t know. If I knew the answer, this hideous
nightmare wouldn’t still haunt me to this day.
So, please, shut up about it! It’s over. Please, leave me alone.
Let’s just yellow, I mean, mellow out. The slicker, I mean
the quicker we forget about it, we will feel hood, I mean,
good, about the whole thing.
