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‘AN ODE TO JERKIN AND JERKIN OFF, A JADED JOURNEY SPENT JERKIN OFF, OR JUST ‘JERKIN OFF’, IF THAT’S YOUR THING’ by G.M.H. Thompson

AN ODE TO JERKIN1 AND JERKIN OFF,2
A JADED JOURNEY SPENT JERKIN OFF,3
OR JUST ‘JERKIN OFF’,4 IF THAT’S YOUR THING

He is home, takin his jerkin off,
in the parlor, after he came in.
She sees him takin his jerkin off,
& she says, she says to him, Loudly,
‘Why Are You Takin Your JERKIN OFF?!?!
In the Parlor, There’s NO JERKIN OFF!!!
It’s like, a rule, or something. Now Go!!
Get out of here with your off-jerking!’
Into exile whilst still jerkin off.5

He walks west takin his jerkin off,
walks slow, fights with folds of cardigan,
tumultuous twists, terrible tweed,
feisty fabric failing to unfold.
Crowds of people stand & stare at him —
one man, one jerkin, jerkin not off,
bravely blund’ring & blindly battling,
grim fashion crusaders makin moves
in the Jerkin World, still jerkin off.6

In a bar takin his jerkin’ off,
he goes to the tap to buy a beer.
‘What’ll it be, jerkin — off,’ says the man.
‘Whad’jou call me?!,’ he slurs in anger.
Fists will fly once the jerkin comes off.
‘Oh, it’s nothin’, just bar-policy:
‘No Hats ● No Mountain-Yaks ● Jerkins: Off’
If you can’t get it off, leave Now!, Sir.’
He flees in disgust, still jerkin off.7

Headin north takin his jerkin off,
the people start to follow him now:
the poor, lost, & maimed, all jerkin-less.
They see their struggles in his struggle,
his hard fight to take his jerkin off.
They march t’wards a better tomorrow,
one . . . in which . . . the jerkin . . . will . . . Be OFF!!!
His commitment to the cause astounds:
he does little else, still jerkin off.8

In a pool takin his jerkin off,
chlorine in his eyes, he tries to swim —
but he can’t!: his jerkin . . . Won’t . . . Come OFF!!!
Flooding! Sinking!! Losing air!!! . . . blackness . . . . . .
Pound, Pound! Ahhhh . . . beautiful . . . breath, lips, yesssss . . . :
she moves back, yet the jerkin’s still on.
‘I need this jerkin off,’ he tells her.
‘I’m a lifeguard, not a mechanic.’
He slyly slips out, still jerkin off.9

He trots south takin his jerkin off,
waltzin past gators & hillbillies; —
they laugh at him — his jerkin’s not off;
it’s reel warm, but that jerkin’s still on.
He whirls past in violent twister:
the jerkin won’t come off at this rate.
The hill folk throw clubs at him; they fear.
Not him, the Jerkin! — Satan’s Raiment!!
Bruised & tired, onward, still jerkin off.10

Up a tree, takin his Jerkin off,
the man jumps, just escapin a bear.
The beast leers up from below, teeth barred,
growls, ‘I bet you want your jerkin off.’
‘Yes,’ says the man, ‘My jerkin seems stuck.’
‘Well, I can help with that . . . there . . . Jerkin.
Just come Down. I’ll take YOUR JERKIN OFF!!!
‘Thanks, I’ll get my jerkin off alone.’
The bear leaves, he stays, still jerkin off.11

He plods east takin his jerkin off,
driftin into big, toxic cities:
forlorn masses, bright lights, stadiums.
He wars the jerkin, tries to strip it,
to beat it, to break it, off-take it,
yet he’s gettin tired, apathetic —
‘These places so Full of CHEMICALS!!!!
Boy, makes me sick, sick of jerkin off.’12
He lurks in the night, still jerkin off.13

Near a drain, takin his jerkin off,
he falls down in the sewer, diseased.
He throws up on some girl — pale, dark eyes.
‘Sorry,’ he gasps, ‘No, I should have seen.’
He rasps, ‘I can’t get my jerkin off.’
She speaks not, but clasps him in her arms,
unbuttoning, unzipping, freeing.
The jerkin melts to dust, defeated.
Sure feels great to get that jerkin off!

  1. ‘Jerkin’ is an olde-timey word for jacket or light coat. ↩︎
  2. When the poet says ‘Jerkin Off’ here, what he really means is more along the lines of ‘Taking One’s Jerkin Off’ or ‘Taking His Jerkin Off’; he would have written the latter instead of the former, only he did not have an extra three syllables lying around and so, alas, he was forced into using a nonsense phrase. ↩︎
  3. [See 2.] ↩︎
  4. [See 2.] ↩︎
  5. In a similar vein as the first footnote, this footnote would like to point out that the poet intended to put something closer to ‘still tryin’ to take his jerkin off’ when instead, in point of reality, he ended up writing ‘still jerkin’ off’, an inferior substitute that was forced upon the poem by base syllabic concerns (he needed 5 syllables more to say what should have been said, what by all that’s right had to be said, what by not being said proves there’s no hope left us; all will fall: fire fire blood blood); it’s a pile of rubbish if you ask me, being particularly damnable because this ‘still jerkin off’ compromise has no possible meaning, at least none that this annotation can ascertain — it’s a total travesty & an egregious crime to the arts that such vapid, slothful verse is permitted nowadays — someone really ought do something about it. ↩︎
  6. [See 5.] ↩︎
  7. [See 5.] ↩︎
  8. [See 5.] ↩︎
  9. [See 5.] ↩︎
  10. [See 5.] ↩︎
  11. [See 5.] ↩︎
  12. Let it be known that this should read, ‘sick of tryin to take my jerkin off,’ instead of ‘sick of jerkin off’ (were there any justice left in the world, this would not be). ↩︎
  13. [See 5.] ↩︎

ABOUT THE ARTIST

G.M.H. Thompson was born on February 15th, 1990, in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and his father was from Chicago, Illinois. On his father’s side, he was an eighth cousin to Ezra Pound four times removed, which means that in the 1600s, their bloodlines converged on a single person (whose name only G.M.H. Thompson’s father knows, for it was his research that uncovered this fact, unknown even to Ancestry.com or MyFamilyTreeBuilder etc.). In 2018, Spartan Press of Kansas City put out G.M.H. Thompson’s first collection, Yard Sale at the Devil’s Petting Zoo. In 2020, G.M.H. Thompson was nominated for a Pushcart but did not receive the laurel crown. In 2023, G.M.H. Thompson put Quetzalcoatl out on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CH2CXSM7

One response to “‘AN ODE TO JERKIN AND JERKIN OFF, A JADED JOURNEY SPENT JERKIN OFF, OR JUST ‘JERKIN OFF’, IF THAT’S YOUR THING’ by G.M.H. Thompson”

  1. One of the First I Ever Wrote – G. M. H. Thompson: Poet

    […] Hey, this is one of the first I wrote– I learned how to write poetry in the sixth grade, & they taught us all the rules & such, trochees, iambs, rhymes, personification, metaphor & simile & onomatopoeia all at once. And in that year, I wrote a number of poems, one of which was fairly good & it was about frogs & I think my 6th teacher who didn’t like me, Mrs. Pelker, deliberately lost it (it probably wasn’t that good, but it might have been amusing). Loosing this frog poem gave me some amount of writers’ block for the next 10 years. In high school, we did read one play of Shakespeare each year, as well as reading some of Chaucer. I didn’t write much poetry at this time, but I did write one fairly amusing prose piece from the perspective of a king piece in a game of chess. In college, during my junior & senior years, I wrote about 2 pieces, and then during my fifth year (yeah, I took a fifth year), I took a prose creative writing class, and I wrote a few in that as part of some post-modern prose experiments. After that, I took a year off before my attempt at grad school, and it was during this year off that I read T. S. Eliot & really started to write a lot of poetry, much of it bad that I wrote during that year. This particular piece was markedly better than a lot of it, and I wrote it just at the start of that year off, based on a riff about a jerkin, an old-fashioned word for light coat, and the word jerkin’, which I had heard in middle school told my a ribald, perverted and violent fellow student in a behavioural management class that I was in for some reason (I had no problem with behaviour– I did take too long on tests, and this was perhaps the reason I was there, to take a test or something; I’m not sure). I want to say that kid’s name was Donny. But anyway, you can’t copywrite a pun, right? That’s what I think. Besides, Donny no doubt stole that from a comic strip panel in Playboy magazine or something. For the longest time, I didn’t submit the poem anywhere, since I couldn’t find anywhere where I thought it would fit in. Barbara Leonard of Masticadores recommended I submit it to The Gorko Gazette, since they put out a lot of humorous pieces, so that’s why I submitted it there. I’d like to give a big shout-out to both her and The Gorko Gazette for putting it up: https://thegorkogazette.com/2024/05/31/an-ode-to-jerkin-and-jerkin-off-a-jaded-journey-spent-jerkin-… […]

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