Improv 2, Week 4

Pimp Limp
--Adrian Matejka
For Flava Flav, circa 1993

On Flavor of Love, you crowed:
Your man Flava Flav's a pimp.
P-I-M-P! from the balcony.
A cascade of kiss and tell
on the woman walking in weaved
shame past the pool: head bowed,
bra tucked in armpit, heels clicking
maestro quick as early morning
sunbathers peeped upward
from behind sunglasses wondering
who disguised a lawn jockey
in a silk robe. It didn't have
to be this way. Fifteen years ago,
you took a jet-setting break once
a month to visit one of your girlfriends
in Bloomington. Me and my boys
hating on you before there was a name
for hateration. Before a football
player's overtures finally pried
that woman loose from you clocked
embrace. The time she cut you loose,
you came to town in a limousine
on a doughnut with a dented back
door. It was sunny, and you got
out of that limping car
with a matching limp to the applause
of me and my boys laughing.
You put your Gazelles on,
kissed two jeweled peace fingers
and tossed them to the crowd.

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Good Vibrations
Picture Brain Wilson’s sun blistered face when he heard: Strictly Hip-Hop boy, I ain't singin' this, bringing this to the entire nation. Black, white, red, brown. Feel the vibration. It was 91’ when Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch released Good Vibrations. We just discovered eyeliner and halter tops and how boys whistled to both—longing for summer in our hair and California tans. Magazines teased: tips for the bedroom, designer mini-skirts, convertibles we couldn’t drive. Remember Mike Eversole? In junior high his locker glimmered lip-glossed kisses. Each one an invitation, desired gossip, a secret admirer. For the Across the Nation dance, he smeared sunscreen on his nose, flowered his neck with gardenias, hit the floor in swim trunks. Check it, I’m a surfer. He bellowed of little black sands, glimmering like lips deposited only for him. We huddled in the corner, starched in grass skirts. His hands reached high and waved in our direction. But all we could do was stare, caught in the vibrations.