The annual Long Hair-Mustache-and-Beard competition
at Chaps Sports Bar and Niteclub
in Alamogordo, New Mexico
is tough.
Hirsute and rough.
I am fair and hairless
not hairy and fearless.
Contest of any kind
makes me weak at the knees
and European all over.
My purpose is submission, passivity
not pumping my fists at the results of competitions
though others, all of whom are experts,
tell me anything is possible
with focus, love and a statement of mission.
On the way there are the usual telltale signs:
adult toys… buy it for him…
queen bed…come in and try us…
and Arby’s for a bargain hotdog.
I have a number of conservative cosmopolitan thoughts
before arriving, white, bald, shining at this craziness
and think what the Hell
what about
everything
everyone else shouts about,
lets just do it for the sake of that
and though its not my natural habitat
I have a sudden lapse of laziness.
I enter
Mustang Sally is ahead by a follicle
she’s groomed herself for success,
second comes a chimpanzee called Van Cleef
then comes The Mexican,
and then low and behairy to behold
a forest starts to grow around my nipples
over my face and body,
coarse sprouts creak beneath my nostrils
a luxuriant gaucho comes fourth
along with a Willie Nelson
and a Moses down to my toeses !
I have believed, I have bullied fate
and I am almost a miracle winner
though I entered late.
My prize is a crate of bananas.
That night I try the queen bed
with a fat chicken called Anal Emma, The Posterior.
Next day I shave hurriedly
having found a melanoma on my boxcar willy
and archived the whole hairy chili
behind a pale and ever more interesting
exterior.