Tim Davis
Poems for Texas

“Whether his policy was right or wrong, he built up the glory of the nation.”
--Sam Houston


1/ Memories of Texas

The free burger wasn’t free
Wasn’t really free
Was the Ponderosa® really?
Cannibal owls behind hunky
SEGREGATIOINS of air
(I feel like Allen Ginsberg here) There
are images in the eyeglints of the derrick minders
Whole kitchen-bound cultures
come to admire hairnets
Habits learned in –sorry
Fashions learned in prison
Stop expounding. Imagine Texas memories
expounding

2/ Ideas of Texas

To “Connecticutitude”
I ascribe a Not-New-York, not-
Massachusettsness, from which
Texas suffers.
Louisiana. Say it. It’s a
ruby paperweight
coming in your mouth.
Arizona. Andalusian eyeball dog
drunk on a Fritz Freeling but like
John Ford’s cone horn, intimidating.
Texas? Taupe proper. A “The Gap”
amid wastoid cardboard personals
T for Texas, just to see her fall

3/ Texas Anthem

Texadrine addicts gulping DelMonte
Texhusbands’ nickel slot child support
Texadermy governments thud with buckshot
Texolipsistic diamonds on my Namibian mine
Texotic old boy fezzes
Texhibitionist menthol up all eleven orifices
Texalicious, crimminy w/ trimmings
Texstasies writhing in McMorgueMansions each Sunday
Songs of Texperience,
texpurgated of marks of woe
Tex nihilo, or perhaps at the mall
Texhuming Sam Houston to
Texmessage “self-interest as revolution”