The Ballad of Rickety Ruth
Slouching across the Earth
Like a ruffled flamingo
With hay on her brow
And the plague in her boots
In the trodden turbid snow
Her ankles are hard as roots
And obtusely sallying forth
Behind a wobbly wheelbarrow
She’s got the itch she’s got the look
She’s got the twitch she’s got the hook
She plucked a church bell off its beam
She bottles her own vinegar
She grew herself a dorsal fin
With her shredded eyes
And a headache to thwart
Ruth sat cross-legged on a tree
Poking inside, looking for sap
To melt it in her needle tea
She would drink it before her nap
And wake on top of the sunrise
To give herself a small head start
She’s got the screech she’s got the growl
She’s got the roar she’s got the howl
She swallowed whole a sugar pine
She filled a ravine with heartache
And an ice lake with dry gin
On the hollow bleak road
Her utensils were clittering
She saw far off in the distance
Three sinister sulky figures
But pursued on her strained advance
She was not one for detours
She was not one to recoil
For a litter of murderlings
She’s got the pitch she’s got the prayer
She’s got the switch she’s got the flair
She’s got wicker under the skin
She stripped a piano of its chords
And played them like a violin
When Ruth solemnly reached
This ambitious barricade
The men promised predictably
To carry out certain torments
Unless she emptied peacefully
The wheelbarrow of its contents
And her disregard was leeched
By the disdain they displayed
She’s got the lure she’s got the snare
She’s got the scars she’s got the stare
She tore apart an angel's wing
To stick the feathers on her sleeve
And bless her hands with starlight sheen
To overcome decisively
This insolent obstacle
She cracked the dryness from her wrists
And stood upright like a totem
Squeezing the hoodlums in her fists
Snapping her jaw like a tin drum
And hurtled them grotesquely
Into the grime, brine and gravel
She’s got the floor she’s got the flare
She’s got the gloom she’s got the glare
She sank kilometers deep
And held her breath for a few weeks
To mingle with the jellyfish
But the men weren't the kind to yield
They ran her down to split her spine
And since they shot her in the ass
Her stool is flaked with lead nuggets
And little chunks of shattered glass
Got stuck in her eye sockets
When she went through the windshield
And landed in the salt mine
She’s got the tusks she’s got the horns
She’s got the spine she’s got the tone
She haggled with a hurricane
And she swayed it quite forcibly
Into swerving off its course
No one heard a single sound
When Ruth delivered their dues
One was given to the birds
Another remained in the roots
With the ruins of the third
She made earrings, cups and flutes
And gave them away in town
Cause she was feeling generous
She’s got the craft she’s got the tools
She’s got the calm she’s got the cool
She wove a sweeping spider web
To atone for the few ones
She tore up in carelessness
She’s a Miocene mermaid
She’s lightning in a snow storm
She’s a mushroom cloud of love
And a mushroom network rod
She’s a caterpillar doll
In a butterfly cabal
She’s a juniper jam jar
She’s a thimbleful of tar
She’s a rusting arsenal
And a primal particle
She’s a dying dialect
Sister to owls and stick insects
She’s a choir conductor
She’s a trained practitioner
She’s a diesel road drummer
And a mystic night wrangler
She’s a cloud and a clover
She’s a bird, she’s a boulder
And she sews up rips in dreams
2016 / 2025