Monday, April 13, 2009

Mr. Fred's Poetry Corner: The Chauvinists

This is for the homies, I know you're out there.

The Chauvinists

We eat the food you grow, and never say thanks,
We hold up walls with supreme grace,
And steady railings that would otherwise go to waste,
We own raincoats, and we make them look good,
We know where your mom was last night,
We can curse you out in foreign languages,
We learn to read, but only after we learn to fight,
We get laid as soon as it is humanly possible,
We can steal magazines while the store owner is looking,
We are surrounded by automobiles, and have our pick,
We get drunk in the morning, and eat breakfast at night,
We eat Chinese food while you sleep,
We get so loaded, you couldn’t even walk,
We hide our fear, and throw terrifying looks,
We never pay, we sneak in,
We are your heroes, admit it,
Our city is so big, you have to say the name twice,
We write the book.

April, 2009

6 comments:

nanute said...

This certainly changes my perspective on the definition of chavunist. Being Irish, are you familiar with the limerick about the man from Norway?

fred c said...

Maybe it was just my experience, but as a boy in CP my impression was that we NYC boys thought that we were much more sophisticated than kids from anywhere else. That was sure borne out by my Company at Navy boot camp, we just teased the hicks mercilessly.

Never heard the limerick about the Norwegian, but I'd love to.

Anonymous said...

The once was a young girl from Norway
Who hung by her feet from the doorway;
Which worked out quite well,
'Cause when you rang her bell,
It actually turned out to be foreplay!

nanute said...

I don't know about being more sophisticated. We certainly had/have better "street smarts."

The Norewgian thing is a bit sophmoric, and I suggested it under the influence of my anti-depressant of choice. Nevertheless, I hope you get a chuckle out of it:

There once was a man from Norway
Whos balls got caught in a doorway
Along came his wife
Who came with a knife
And now they hang in the hallway

Rory Cripps said...

So you teased the "hicks" huh? Did you bully them too? Back in your CP days, did you ever notice the expression on people's faces (people that were from, say Westchester County or Long Island) when you apprised them that you were from CP? HA!

fred c said...

I never bullied anybody, and I mostly teased the guys from Philadelphia.

The Navy purposely put guys from New York and Philadelphia together with guys from the deep south so we could get used to each other. Those guys spoke so slowly, and we so quickly, that it was a real comedy sometimes.

We New Yorkers were ok with everybody, we'd seen it all before. The guys from Philly were trouble, they bullied hicks and gave us New Yorkers shit all the time, "you all think you're so tough."

At the end of boot camp there was some score-settling. Take a guy into the bathroom and "flush" him; hold down a sleeping guy with his blanket and beat him a little. The Philly crowd told me one afternoon that it was my turn that night. I went right up to the biggest guys face and told him, "after ten weeks of this shit, I'm just mad enough to like it. That's my bunk over there. I'll be waiting."

I slept with my boondockers on, propped up on the bad rail. I slept like a baby. Nobody bothered me.