The Yeller Berets are a troupe of moped-mounted poets who ride side-saddle. They feud with a rival cycle gang, the Butterfield Bikers. These confrontations generally take place at their respective clubhouses, at bars, nightclubs and fairs. 

The Yeller Berets compose hastily scribbled sonnets amidst skirmishes in order to toss around as calling cards. They wear tie-dyed canvas chaps, without the precaution of an under-trouser, this both ensures a provocative bare-buttocked effect and also presents a convenient plane onto which the troupe brand is marked. The troupe brand is a cartoon of a paintbrush bench-pressing an engine block.

In addition, YBs wear tweed jackets displaying a version of the Jolly Roger motif on back. This features Oscar Wilde’s head with mullet hairdo, the playwright’s tongue touching the tip of his nose, atop lies a quill pen and paintbrush ‘cross-bones.’ Above the image, arched text reads: “We are not mean; more meandering,” and below in street-Latin, the phrase “Mucho arrogantis non plus ignoramus.”

The poetry takes the form of the impromptu criticism of their rival ensemble, as an often more deeply scarring alternative to physical violence… 

“Guzumped by a leathery itch, 
One of your number a snitch,
He with severed-sleeve T-shirt requiring the stitch
You polyunsaturated sonbitch!”

This ritual antagonism of the more traditional Butterfield gang is made rhythmic by the balletic flourishes with which the Yeller Berets generally outmaneuver their raging adversaries in and around pool tables, jukeboxes and saloon furniture. Often a cam-man is present to film what the YBs consider their ‘choreographed confrontations’, and the resulting footage submitted to experimental dance festival panels for consideration. 

To be on the safe side, each Yeller Beret employs his own minder, men well versed in the arts and crafts of slappy-kicky. In the event that an ankle is turned or a flapping chap wraps itself around a protruding muffler, rendering a YB momentarily helpless, the minder will often prove invaluable by going physically bonkers.

The Yeller Berets are led by two men, Nelly and Sheats. Nelly is a proponent of the disruption of popular Butterfield leisure activities, such as wet t-shirt contests, dog fighting, and wanton smashing. A typical Nelly-led incursion will parody Butterfield pursuits. For example, at a drag racing event, Yeller Beret members appeared en masse fully made-up in ladies’ clothing, jogging alongside the wheel-spinning motorcyclists, miked-up and vigorously lisping Throoom! Throoom! Other such encroachments have involved projecting movie footage of bubblegum blowing and trick yo-yoing onto targeted clubhouse walls, the aim to trivialize and demean what YBs deem ‘reactionary tough-guy practices,’ practices the Butterfield Bikers hold dear. 

Nelly is a diminutive man, but brave and not without an amused sense of self deprecation. Last New years’ eve, he showed up at a fancy dress event in Butterfield territory with acupuncture needles poking out of his person, a liberal dose of horse tranquilizer in his system, and was carried into a corner of the bar, draped over a chair by his minder, who announced that Nelly had come as his own voodoo doll, then muttered something about self-abuse, and left. At the end of the evening Nelly’s minder returned to find him unharmed and they promptly left the establishment, the Butterfield gang had been convinced that Nelly’s appearance was a set up, and had kept a close eye on him throughout the evening without recourse to violence. For The Yeller Berets, such actions are without question, heroic victories in a war of value systems, but for the Butterfield Bikers, “Ss all juss a buncha freakin’ bullshoop.”

Sheats, on the other hand, prefers to operate from the inside, more of an infiltrator you might say. Indeed, a standard Sheats offensive is more akin to the old switcheroo: at a Butterfield business transaction, Yeller Berets replaced cases of heroin and cocaine with chicken liver parfait and crème Brûlées. Then, at the moment the purchasing party inspected the narcotic, YBs transmitted dialogue through an amplification rig, from a remote location, most likely shielded by a dumpster, the intention to provoke ruckus and grappling: “aha! The finest chicken liver parfait folding money might acquire!” …and old codes being old codes, the sabotage was complete. 

If, as often occurs, a Butterfield biker might flick beer or microwavable lasagna at a Yeller Beret’s decorous chaps, his mind instantly revving with poetic possibility, the YB arsenal may be consulted. Each minder is equipped with a selection of accessories as a contingency to most gang-poetry outcomes. Items include, scrolls for the sonnets themselves, quill pens, manicure equipment, cologne, various types of nozzles for attachment to bottle tops, hoses and mufflers, and alcohol pills for the enhancement of weakened lagers. Change of underwear, bookmarks, counterfeit library cards, toothpaste and floss, a Native American abacus, duct tape, that kind of thing…green tea, tide tables and a steam powered printing press. 

The printing press had lately proved invaluable. In a clumsy attempt to engage the YBs in written conflict, Butterfield Bikers had gone around town daubing walls with crude graffiti, the campaign highlights featured such idiomatic terrorism as ‘Fuck you asshole’ and ‘Eat shit and die fuckheads all y’all.’ One fresh concept even invoked ‘Fathersucking.’   

And so in response all over the county YBs unleashed a blitzkrieg of words and pictures from the printed surfaces, not only of walls, but of T-shirts, posters, pamphlets, and on wire framed lawn placards, aphorisms and slogans such as “The vegetable garden is mightier than the drive thru.” “Joseph Haydn once beat Hank Williams Jr. 14-3 at pool” followed by, “Brahms always pedaled a BMX to the sheet music supplier.”  

A Butterfield Bikers’ retaliation banner dangling from a prominent road bridge posed the question…“Why cycle when you can ride?” Although it later became clear that they had commissioned a local journalist to compose the lackluster maxim. As a response, the YBs added underneath in an unusually opulent rococo font: “Because I wish to remain fit and healthy you fat bastards!”  

After an initial barrage from the YB lexicon, Nelly and Sheats decided it was now time to capitalize on the Butterfield Bikers state of literary disadvantage. Seen from the adjacent car park, the Butterfield clubhouse emitted stark lashes of lazy strobe light from a good sized window. Inside, a thick skinned stripper creaked and strained, pulling and reeling at a stainless steel pole like a fevered catamaran sailor tacking into a breeze. The machine was turned down to 1, or 0.5, and sluggish bass music seemed to prop up her heft while veils of light pressed against the active flesh. Around the room, men glared into the figure, not so much aroused as just very aware.

Abruptly and without sound the interior became fractured, irregular triangles of surface were picked-up by the strobe, imploding into the room in lethargic phases, as if a sci-fi affects team were holding time machine try-outs on a particularly low budget. Rather than the seamless trajectory of objects falling through space, the bikers sat and gawked at a montage of glass moving in impeded steps, as the light performed on/off Morse on the broken fragments. 

Plunging to the fore was what appeared to be the flaming head and neck of a dragon straining forwards, eager it seemed to perform some kind of Arthurian cunnilingus on the stripper. But this was no such beast, what had been flung through the window pane was a burning easel. 

As the exotic performer tensed, transforming from her uniform posturing into a more realistic state of alarmed contortion, both stiletto heels simultaneously gave way, and under a brief flash, the bikers witnessed a momentary expression of embarrassment on her face; what followed was rare; a collective nanosecond of biker-to-stripper empathy. The easel, meanwhile, plunged further toward the dancer as another sharp strip of light illuminated the pole. Fortunately for the lady, as the neck of the easel struck the vertical prop, it took a detour into the laps of three notably lascivious greasers parked a little too close. 

“Shitbinfuckinwhaddacluckin!?” exclaimed a bearded slab of highly spiced denim.
“Saa fuckin’ Yeller berrays!” roared another. 

In one swarming movement every bikeman in the place took up arms and a cavalcade of not-so-smart-bombs was then unleashed through the jagged aperture, or rather, Light beer bottles were thrown with practiced accuracy back out through the window. The barrage was so sustained as to a) completely deplete the bikers’ own beverage stocks, and b) to appear as jerky plumage under the continuing strobe.  Whatever was outside of the window must have taken one hell of a pounding; in this case, thin air and sidewalk. 

As the strobe still stroked away on its lowest setting, and the wreckage glistened at intervals, a dead mammal flopped onto the checkered linoleum floor. A bunch of paintbrushes had been carefully placed into the animal’s mouth, to give the impression of a stinky macabre vase. The creature’s mouth was now literally a bristling bunch of brushes, a perverse spoof on flower-arranging-as-pastime.

“Told ya, sssaa fuckin Yeller Berries, and what the fuck’sss this!”   
One of the more alert Butterfield gang held the animal against his Motorheaded chest and examined it in more detail.

“Isss wonnof their fuckin poems.”

Using the format of a late nineteenth century telegram, the Yeller Berets had issued another telling writ against their foe…

“Confused by flightpath of hot easel stop. You now fondle dirty dead weasel stop.”