It Is ‘Elvis Week’ (August 9 – 17, 2022)!  

Have you seen the new biopic about Elvis Presley? It is basically a film about addictions: his mother’s to alcohol; his manager, Col. Tom Parker (played by an unrecognizable Tom Hanks), addicted to money and gambling; Elvis to fame and drugs; his teenage fans to their own hormonal hysteria from watching Elvis’ display of sexually suggestive histrionics on stage. My father called him Pelvis Wriggly. I wrote the Elvish Pretzel in 2003, Return To Sender just last week.
 
The Elvish Pretzel aka Pelvis Wriggly
 
The Elvish Pretzel’s dough was squiggly
an oafish loaf of lounge lizard proportions
twas baked in the image of Pelvis Wriggly
you had to love its tender distortions
once reaching the perfect temperature
it got up from its baking pan and strolled
past light crust doughboys who for sure
liked those hot sticky buns being sold
beyond carrot cakes and banana cream pies
through marble halls of Memphis malls
near jelly donuts and candy bars to despise
past spas selling pools with Niagara Falls
shops with Titanic ties and Gordian knots
binding all to myths of the Sisyphean orb
for sunny fun during cold spells and hots
eating all the hotdogs and buns it could absorb
the Elvish Pretzel is now a long time gone
it has left the building for the bakery today
putting on pounds and making its rounds
in an amazing grace land on Labor Day.
 
Return to Sender: Brain Blender
 
Loving memories coming back slowly upstairs
to a brain pan balcony suffering from who cares
returning to the sender whose befuddled brain
is stirred up and mixed in a senescent blender
mixing memories and emotions across stormy 
seas of sensuality, joy, sorrow, and despair
forgetting yesterday and preceding tomorrow
How did that old Elvis Presley song go ?
“ Return to sender, address unknown
  no such number, no such zone”
Funny I can remember that but not the names
of sweethearts remembered. I recall the crush
how we met and all the romance and the rush
layers of an onion union are peeled back
no more crocodile tears from slicing it up
Adam’s rib and Eve’s big fib now meet again
was it at a record hop or after a football game
swimming in the ocean or chlorine filled pool
return to sender, name forgotten, age unknown
all these years gone, nostalgia is not a mender
don’t know how to contact them on cell phone.

Joey ‘Pepe Batbon’ Connolly (Special to the Saipan Tribune)
Joey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.