[Georgia Avenue]

Lot of great poems in this thread... This one combines my two favorite things:

Ooh My Soul

—Little Richard
By Charles Harper Webb

By night, ghosts roam Aunt Ermyn’s
elm-shrouded, hundred-year-old home.
By day, my cousin Pete, just out of high school,
combs his ducktail and keeps time
to records with his creaky rocking chair.
I’m in the hall, creating all-star teams
of baseball cards when, blaring
through Pete’s open door, I hear . . .
war drums? Or is it a runaway train?
Keepa knockin’ but you cain’t come in,
then squeals like tires around a curve.
Those chugging drums, smoking piano,
squawking duck-call saxophones
make me feel like an oil rig ready to blow.
I see wells pumping, teeter-totters bumping,
giant turtle-heads working out and in
as bronco riders wave tall hats in the air.
I see girls twirling, dresses swirling
high over their underwear,
guys doing splits, or inch-worming
across the floor.
It makes me want
to slam my head back and forth
like a paddle ball—to jump, shout, bang
my hands on walls, and flap them
in the air—to fall onto the ground
and writhe, flail, roar like Johnny Cerna
in his famous Kiddieland tantrum.
Keepa knockin’ but you cain’t come in,
the preacher howls. But I am in.
I’m in the living room, Bandstand on tv,
Dad ranting, “. . . goddamn Congo beat!”
I’m in the back seat of his Ford
a decade later, learning what that beat
could be. I’m in my first band, hoarse
from screaming “Long Tall Sally.”
I’m in my college dorm, trying to jam
that wild abandon into poems.
I’m in my car, heading for work,
when “Good Golly, Miss Molly!”
catapults out of my Blaupunkt stereo.
I’m walking into Pete’s bedroom,
where I’ve never dared to go. Oh,
womp bompalumomp, a lomp bam boom!
I’m not thinking in words, but I know
I’ve spent my seven years rehearsing
how to feel this way. It’s more exciting
than a touchdown any day, or a home run,
a gunfight, hurricane waves at Galveston,
a five-pound bass on a cane pole.
“What is that?” I ask Pete. He says,
“Rock-and-roll.”