Alan Catlin- Three Poems

Sex with Aliens

All of them casting couch co-eds,

dressed like extras from a Marquis

de Sade movie, “120 Days of Sodom”

or “Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue,”

outfits by Frederick’s of Hollywood,

the Fire Sale, the rejects and the discontinued,

all of them barhopping with chest protector

wearing dweebs, wielding slide rules like

weapons in their “Mars Attacks” costumes,

boys they would ditch in a biker bar after

shots of Sex on the Beach, where the take-me-

to-your-leader-boy tried to pay for the round

with a credit card no one there was about to take.

Half way to heaven drunk, the girls latch on

to some toga party frat boys with Halloween

death masks sporting twelve inch rubber dicks

instead of noses, the implication clear, but,

if their money was like green, who cared?

Losing those guys became, like, necessary once

it became all too clear they could only drink

their Slo Comfortable Screw shooters through

straws and like, who wants to wait for them when

they take so long to finish?  After a few lines

in the ladies, the whole time and space continuum

thing becomes, like, just so irrelevant. I mean,

who cares about stuff like that? It’s all about

here and now and having fun.

The aliens

double park by the primo, fire lane,

by-the-front-door-of-the-bar, space,

intending to stay for five, place a bet,

grab a number, have a brew, instead,

stay for an hour, oblivious to traffic

nightmares outside, the honking of

the horns, the denting of the bumpers;

wear Ted Bundy Fry Day memorial t-shirts,

the mass murderer’s handsome, smiling face

inside a circle, a red line overprinted,

simulated heat waves circulating all

around, dead to the world but alive in our

hearts imprinted on the back for all to see;

proudly proclaim, after crashing family

barbeques, outdoor cookouts, that they

“don’t just have a  record but a fucken album;”

think all boundaries are made to be torn

down, all rules to be broken, endlessly

demonstrating “that an order of protection

is about as useful as a string of garlic”;

think that life is just one long Clint Eastwood

movie they would be stars in, never expecting

to end up perched on a wobbly wooden cross

in a graveyard with a noose around their necks

or on the wrong end of a “make my day”

ultimatum; are always surprised when bad

things happen to evil people, as if, for some

reason, they might not deserve the worst possible

redress.

Homeward Bound

There must not have been

much else for him to do

wherever he’d spent the last

few years of his life except

pump iron, bust heads and

carve stuff into his skin.

Most of his remaining brain

cells had been deprived of

oxygen chasing ufo’s toward

Venus and were spiraling

out of control through his

nervous system causing involuntary

spasms, spastic reactions so

severe he looked like a spontaneous

St Vitus Disco Dance competition

winner with white foam stuff

at the corners of his tainted blue,

vermiform lips. Phoning for help

was probably a waste of time,

though someone was going to

have to clean up the inevitable

mess and the body afterwards.

The hope was whoever was

supposed to meet him here was

unavoidably detained forever.