Monday, April 14, 2014

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.

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