first rule of poetry club

I was part of the Beat Poets group, hippies more than hipsters, but sometimes we’d ambush the much cooler Slam Poetry group downtown, a very different scene! Our host asked me to write a Slam poem, and join him in the raid.. He said it had to be an edgy, catchy, pop-culture “hit,” that could pass muster downtown..
WHOLE CANDY BAR by frank martyn
i don’t need bang for my buck
i just need tang for my truck
because it runs on astronaut juice
from the spaceship filling station
and love and luck
i sing intergalactic mojo blues to the
spirit in the sky
for you
part of your hair pulled back
and part hanging down
a half pony tail erect
with zero gravity moving laterally
like we did in breathless atmospheres
special dishevelled undress
slap happy and dapper
but time fish tail whacked my face
everyone has gone
except us two
and the candy bar
let’s walk the earth from birth
to dearth and hurt
like multi syllabic serfs in a crew
polyphonic fools
shiny new tools
hanging side by side
on god’s workbench
we hammer drill
spill sawdust grease
onto broken worlds of
dry dreams
wet eyes
screaming laptops
atop stylish girls
gourmet newfactory coffee scents
expensive cents with no sense
matching dot coms
yahooing ad mausoleum
to lonely boney cheeks
hard honey
all money are bicycle cards
when you break it down
line it up and stack houses of love
love just kicks money’s ass
any time day or night
i knew that for so long
i can’t even remember
when i was twenty years old i ate a whole candy bar
bought and wanted another more only
hungry and bungling
again
and again until someone took it
ate it and left empty wrapper alley
take it bake it fake it make it
hold it sold it stepped in it wept in it
no matter how you wear your hair
go ahead, bite it
don’t hesitate unabated
i ate a whole candy bar once
while God and His moon men laughed
because half laughs last fast
and until that day, we split it
it was never really whole at all