Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

ME & CHRISSIE O'DEE

by Steve Hellyard Swartz

to the tune of "Me and Bobby McGee"

Busted flat in Delaware, pissed off by The Change
And I’s feelin’ nearly jaded as a teen.
Chrissie thumbed a hard-sell down, for white folks deep in pain,
We rode it all the way to victory

I pulled my Penthouse with its fold-out of the girl with the banana,
I was getting off when Chrissie read me the news
She stopped my hands from slapping time, telling me The Lord didn’t take a shine
To masturbation or anything short of procreation and then only if you’re Christian, not a Jew

Freedom's just another word for no more taxes that we’ll lose,
America don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free, now now.
And feeling good was easy, Lord, when Chrissie read the news
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Chrissie O’Dee

From Rand’s Kentucky coal mines to the California Whitman sun,
Hey, Chrissie shared the secrets of The Lord
Through all kinds of polling, through primaries that we won
Hey Chrissie baby? Little hottie made me feel a lot less old

One day up near election time, she let me slip away
She's looking for that Senate seat and I hope she finds it,
But I'd trade all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday
To be holding her scolding body close to mine

Freedom's just another word for no more taxes that we’ll lose,
America don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free, now now.
And feeling good was easy, Lord, when Chrissie read the news
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Chrissie O’Dee



Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady, NY. He is a frequent contributor to New Verse News. Swartz is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Patterson Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Kennesaw Review, and online at Best Poem and switched-on gutenberg. He is the winner of a First Place Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists for Excellence in Broadcasting. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, a movie he wrote and directed, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
_____________________________________________________