Tell me, boy! what you get from our girl
& free yourself from her handcuffs & chains!

After all, we don’t expect the errand boy to turn up empty-handed, do we?
& a slave always tells a truer tale with the thumb-screws on.

So, spill the beans, boy! Reel it off right from the start!
I’m all ears. & don’t try to fob me off
with some lovey-dovey shit sob story you think I want to hear.

Have you seen her yet in a state with her hair-do all undone?
How much water fall from her eye?
Have you seen her, boy! smash her compact across the bedsit wall
& kick her locked bauble-box away under the bed
& wear nothing but that same frumpy grey top over her tits day after day?

Say how her dirty black hands ain’t got no gold drippin’ from ‘ em no mo’.
How her place got an atmosphere you need an ice-pick to get through,
with her little sistas all a-gettin’ at ya all day
to tell you what got into her and what you done to make her that way.

Does she do nothin’ all day but watch crap on TV
& fill the ashtray with un-lipsticked Malboro stubs
& Hershey wrappers and tear-drenched Kleenex screwed up in little balls?

Does she jerk up and cry out in her sleep
to pick up an old bone she has to pick with me? Sleepsaying:

“You man enough, to keep your oath, lover boy?
Your word your bloody bond, boy! your ball and chain?
Perjury put you away a long stretch, boy!
You gonna do me like he dumped me, lawyer boy!
Like trash in the can, like a tramp
wi’ no place I would ever wanna call home.
He happy seein’ me like my soul
rot on death row? He think me happy you doin’ me
one, doin’ me over, doin’ me in with your manhood
& your fists like he do, far better than you, lover boy!?

“Some other bitch hook him sure and not with her cool looks
& sweet winnin’ mamma ways, no. I’m tellin’ you, lawyer boy,
she drug him, sonny, with her big wet, furry, black Santa Claus,
with her gramma’s herbs & her brother’s cheap shit-hot crack
& a ragged poppet crucified on twigs in the woods
& smeared with ooze of punctured toad
& viper-bite to draw-draw the love-juice from his flabby bones
& chicken-feathers found round a grave glued to his zombie heart
& a scrap of a shroud round his undead head
& she torched the poppet of him on a doll’s house funeral pyre
so he go up in smoke and love.

“Get it down, lawyer boy! expert witness to my dreams?
‘Cos if you don’t, I’ll have my way with the both of you,
when it all goes on to appeal. I’ll get my sweet revenge
with both of you, writhing at my painted toes like snakes or worms.
There’s still some black-assed widow a-weaving her web in your empty beds,
lover-boys! & you can have Venus and Serena
in there at the same time, honeys; I still got you
in my crosswire, lover boys!”

& when you got it down, boy, come a-runnin’
& bring the goods to Daddy, like some mista
kicked you up the ass to get you a-movin’ boy!
Cryin’ your testimony like a baby,
paid for by nights with her. Admit it, boy!
She ain’t cheatin’ on me with a toy like you;
she’s just a-playin’ with you to hot me up. On your oath, boy!
Tell her I’ll be checkin’ into rehab
& a-keeping ma prick clean for a spell
& she’ll be back.

‘cos, boy!, if I get to make up & make out
after this little Civil War,
I’m your Abraham Lincoln, boy!
& you better sure thank me & God & the Constitution
& your fucking lucky stars & stripes
for setting your black ass free.