Thank you, Jesus! The screams from the upper deck balconies
at the Orange Bowl and Joe Robbie Stadium—for decades
the rabid schizophrenic fandom of the jolly fat-man who looked
like a redneck father Christmas—if a team lined up opposite
orange and teal or orange and green, they were your sworn
enemy and no display of athletics would change your mind;
you never gave an inch, an M80 ant death. Thank you, Jesus!
The rolled diploma in your hand oddly familiar, a Master’s Degree.
When Julio worked the cruise lines, he saw you leading a charge
of marine biologists on a field trip; your unmistakable girth
bounding down the docks to your charter with incredible ease
and fluidity, their eager eyes making mental notes; two-ton turkey,
king of the midway. Jesus Cottie; nighttime Cottie must’ve been
the one who forgot football and academics and released the Pandora’s Box
of demons of your backbeat—at that reunion, was it ‘97?
Twenty years after putting Miami on the punk rock map, those 4/4 blasts
fracked my transversospinal muscles; felling my multifidus,
semispinalis and rotatores like rotted trees,
crumbling the base of my skull; coming back from Hell, taking dares.
Jesus Cottie, when the sunlight arched over you,
did anyone know about the fisticuffs?
The crossroad devil who couldn’t handle you? That you told that honky
David Allen Coe to take his job and shove it and stole into the windless,
northern Florida night—future uncertain,
no payphone in sight? Did you hatch plans for funding home improvements
or hiding bodies in motel mattresses?
Surreal lyrics sure but those thoughts must’ve
sauntered an escape from an unlocked door in your mind. Thank you, Cottie!
Relentless skin-killer, psycho-tribal pummeler—
you never hid behind those spectacles; never claimed intellect
over raw troglodyte subhumanity. You’d have a laugh over what passes for drummers
these days. You gave everything, led two lives, saw through Nixon’s
binoculars;—you were the fairest visitor this fucking city ever did see.
