February 17: Another Dead Wrestler, W. Todd Kaneko, "Captain Lou Albano Says He is the Guiding Light"

Yes, I'm giving you another dead wrestler poem from Todd Kaneko tonight.  I think the reason I love these poems so much is because they're about wrestlers, not van Gogh's brushstrokes or Mozart's cello concertos.  Poetry can be about Flash Gordon and Andre the Giant.  I'm actually thinking about writing a book of poems based on Star Wars.  I think the world needs a few Wookie odes and Bantha sestinas.

That's my idea, anyway.  I would enjoy doing something like that.

Saint Marty hopes the Force will be with him.

Captain Lou Albano Says He is the Guiding Light

by:  W. Todd Kaneko

I'm like a snake, baby, I move and groove!  I can be the guiding light!  I can watch, I can look for weaknesses!  I can turn Mr. Saito into a maniac killer!

----Captain Lou Albano, WWF Wrestling Manager

Don't be a hero if you don't have to--

be the snake if you need to hurt

someone, the eagle if I tell you to be

a pair of scissors and a tattered flag.

A man can be a pistol, the tip of a razor

for those chumps up in the cheap seats.

Be the beard, wired with rubber bands

and gristle.  Be roughneck, bareback

so you can learn to talk to a woman,

hijack her telephone number, her name

if she has one.  I am your guiding light

in hours of gloom.  I speak with the bygone

snarl of a carnival barker, that salty tongue

spouting from the lips of an exorcist

drunk on church wine.  I swallow bees

to hone my bluster, wear my shirt open,

the hair on my chest raked with loco

weed and thistles.  A boy is a switchblade

in my pocket, a man a brand new suit

unleashing havoc in the dark.

Listen:  you be sabretooth and supernova,

an El Camino charging blind at oblivion.

Be a young stallion, cocksure and lurid

in a fight.  Bear skin, bulldozer, broken

bottle brandished in a back alley brawl--

it's your choice.  You don't have to 

want to be the killer.  Just be the killer.