"TELL HIM WHAT YOU WANT!!!"

 

TELL HIM WHAT YOU WANT!!!

–for Lee Bassett

My friend says he likes my walking poem

but doesn’t know Archimandrite Aimilianos,

Elder Aimilianos, as he’s called at Simonopetra,

or even the Coptic Psalter, but

it doesn’t bother him. Is it, he asks,

the same Archie Bell & the Drells,

who sang, Tighten up? Exactly,

Exactly, I say. One and the same.

There’s a rumored

recording of the evening they spent

riffing in honor of the Desert Fathers,

playing on one-legged stools

to keep them alert and upright.

To keep them from the fall.

It is said, too, they were competitive,

that they cried, Foul!

when they were outlasted

by the monk on bass.

Jim Bodeen

17 November 2022