Rakoczy

This poem was published in Open Wide Magazine in 2010, and is about my dear, geographically challenged, friend Lila Rakoczy.

You fought for English rights

peppered with Texan fire,

took that road to the Civil War,

shook hands with Charles I.

You sought to see all the castles

and did see quite a few.

In the ruins you found a home.

That’s probably why I met you.

Us angry riot girls with

the same redneck blood,

but from different parts of the world.

Sharing war stories

and showing battle scars,

bleeding pine and fir sap

all over the living room carpet.

Us losers and battle-stars

struggling against the gravel

that flows through us.

The curses we inherited,

the decline of our mothers,

the destruction of our fathers,

burning the myths

and burying the rotten bones.

Us poor white trash

made of Ugric-cultural sap,

declaring we’re buses

rather than bus stops,

demanding promises,

rather than probabilities,

building belief structures,

or simply tearing them down.

She cackled at Jon Stewart

and yelled at the news,

faintly smelled of rose

and yellowed dusty pages.

She took shit from no-one

and had a way with words.

But when she rooted in Yorkshire

they took her back to Texas.

Before she left she shrugged and said:

‘It’s just another war,

for us white trash whores.’