Alan Catlin- Three Poems

 

The Yard Sale at the End of the Mind

They bring things that are

of no use, not to them,

not to you, not to anyone:

storm trooper masks, tricorders

for contacting space ships long

ago taken out by Vulcan war

ships, cracked hoses, watering

cans with no spouts, a Zen garden

rake; all this stuff they want to

pack into the overloaded truck,

the space where the back seat

should be, all that junk lifted

from landfills and roadside attraction

dumps.  A pry bar would be useful

for arranging latest acquisitions but

none are available at any price,

still the collecting goes on, after dark,

by the lights of their short circuiting

dashboard, control panels, the static

from their radio broadcasting secret

messages from the wild blue yonder,

up there, where the stars are.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

Half-sleeping in the heat,

some kind of alien invasion   

movie on the TV, maybe,

“It Came from Outer Space,”

or, maybe, “The Man Who Fell

to Earth”, frozen wastes

replaced by desert planet

well beyond a dark side of

the moon, Holst music,
            “The Planets Suite” becoming

“Mars Bringer of War” morphing

into Bowie singing,

“….. .. I ’m  putting out the fire

with gasoline, I’m putting out

the fire………”    lucid dreaming now,

so thirsty in the night, so thirsty

and all the water gone, only

Beefeaters and ice, all my pretty

ones dying in the sun burst, arid,

never changing night no rain ever

falls in, heat lightning and random

light, pale white men with cat’s

eyes, reflected visions in a bathroom

cabinet mirror, dissecting the dreamer

awake in another man’s dream of

somewhere else, gunfire in the street,

the first awakening into a long hell

to come.

The Alien Lover

“You’re a freak. I don’t mean that unkindly. 

I like freaks. That’s why I like you.”

            Candy Clark as Mary Lou

            in ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth”

She fell for this punk rock god

but he found her look to be way

middle class, bourgeois in the worst

way and told her so, “Compared to

you the girls I like are aliens.”

“I can do alien.” She said. Locked

herself in a salon with two demented

stylists on acid and told them to be

creative, which was a kind of death

wish, suicide by extreme makeover.
“What a total gas,” they said, “like

totally freaky. And we get paid.”

So they went to work. Attacked her

with a groomer’s equivalent of hedge

clippers, two kinds of hair dye, and

bleach, then got down and dirty on

her face with straight pins, rings, and

studs with semi-precious stones,

enlisting a tattooist somewhere along

the line who did her dirty with death

heads, smoking jesuses and his wiggy

apostles, until her body resembled a 60’s

witch on a psychedelic bender that might

never end. Good thing she was pasted on

peyote buttons too.  Looked into a mirror

and saw that it was good; the perfect picture

of a disaffected youth with a devil fetish,

death wish and a drug habit no street

fighting man with a microphone could

ignore unless he was as warped and as high

as she was when she took the plunge. 

A few months of total degradation, a stint

in rehab, and a hold on her trust funds

made the whole bad trip seem unreal. 

That and his flaming out  in some weird

murder/ suicide pact with an underage runaway

from Iowa City, made her see the error

of her ways. Took the European tour cure,

making it from one end of the continent

to the other, on some sexual joy ride like

Russian Roulette with bodily fluids that

threatened to get serious when she heard

conversations in nearby rooms about white

slavery, Saudi Arabian oil money and places

in the desert even heat seeking missiles couldn’t

find.  Back home she didn’t exactly live

the life of a nun but found the thrill was gone

now that the ultimate risk had been eliminated

from the game. Life was dull but she’d manage

and in ten years she’d be having all the best

laser surgery a six, going on seven figures a year,

allowance could buy. Still, no matter what she

did or, how much foundation she applied, the scars

would always show through.

 Alan Catlin has poems in Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Dreams and Nightmares, Ygdrasil and darkling Magazine. He has been nominated three times for the science fiction poetry award, The Rhysling Award and for the horror book award, The Bram Stoker Awards for his chapbook “The Insomniac's Gift” illustrated by collage artist Michael Shores. His latest full length book of poetry is “Alien Nation”.