Jimbo

a name that conjures images of
warm tobacco spit-filled soda cans
and back pocket circles worn into
ill-fit slide down blue jeans with,
a loud slurred cursing voice,
and a violent streak, as big as Texas.

The last I heard he was a police officer,
but in the haunted memory of youth he
still invokes the image of a
vicious Darwinian redneck archetype
that never fades away.

Although his bile saliva had graced
the back of my head on
more than one occasion and
I had seen him beat others rather badly
especially Chris Cooper,
whose flat back crotch face crucifixion
had seemed particularly humiliating
in its homo-erotic overtone,
I had escaped his wrath.
Due mostly, to an absence
of both pride and reputation
that allowed me the freedom
to run like a frightened child
(which in fact I was)
seven houses down
from the corner school bus drop off
to the relative safety of my front door.

Far from the most athletic
kid on the block I could still outrun
Jimbo, whose lumbering Neanderthal-ish
ape like frame, put him at
a disadvantage, at least in speed.

Mostly, I remember the aluminum
foil that he had inserted
in and around the ass
of his pet Douchhound, and
the discomfort it caused the
weenie dog, as it
rolled around in the grass
while Jimbo slurred a threat to
beat the living shit
out of any kid that dared
to offer aid to HIS dog.

Despite vast oceans of both
time and miles that
separate us now and
despite myself, with
all that I aspire to,
I wish him only ill
whenever I think back.

That son of a bitch.

The worst of everything.