Saturday, May 31, 2014

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

                                                Alien Invasion

Claiming immunity from persecution,
he communes with fire hydrants,
looks to traffic signals for validation,
directions to the next astral plane.
He is the receptor of vital messages,
all the knowledge needed, he knows.  
Harbors secrets like the ones contained
by the scared books of the Apocrypha,
the ones after a Book of Revelation.
Says he once opened the Seventh Seal
to see what was inside, rode with
the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse
as if they were an outlaw band like
the James Gang, the Dalton boys,
before they headed South, donned hoods
and burned crosses on lawns. Beheld
the pale horse, pale rider at a stakes race
at Finger Lakes that was later cancelled
due to inclement weather. Expected
more news of a strange kind of alien
invasion he was a future commander of.
Spoke to blurry images in picture windows
when all other pleas for attention or
recognition failed.  Said he wasn’t crazy,
just misunderstood, his words misconstrued.
Has a visitor’s pass for a locked-in ward
in his wallet he has never uses, since
the last time, when they threatened never
to let him out.  What was that all about?
A man like him with so many connections,
in so many high places.



The Extraterrestrial Highway

He said that he gave up
a lifelong dream of
hitchhiking the US of A
just outside of Roswell
New Mexico in some               
roadside diner where
the menu included dead
alien burgers and the waitress
says, "It's just food coloring
the makes them look green,
honey, inside its just Grade
A US Inspected beef.
Besides, everyone knows real
alien burgers are much greener
than that." He made a
spontaneous decision to give up
meat that day, a decision he
hadn't gone back on since,
right after ordering the Area 51
Special: Green Eggs and Ham
with a side of toast and mint jelly,
a meal that took away his
appetite, his sense of purpose
and direction in life along
Route 375, The Extraterrestrial
Highway.



Alien Vengeance

Maybe it was because the pact agreed to
by President Eisenhower and
the invading aliens was no longer
in effect, both sides violating terms,
we, the host planet, having allowed human
experimentation on select subjects were
no longer playing ball, reluctant subjects/
science projects fighting back, slaughtering
guest Mengele’s in outburst of native fury,
their bodies whisked away to secret holding
areas like the bodies from Area 51.
Maybe it was because reparations were
not forthcoming, explanations offered,
a million Americans disappeared and
were never heard from again, thousands more
in Mexico where disappearing was becoming
an art form, a new atrocity exhibit every
other week, each more ghastly than the one
before.  Maybe these disappearances were
a planned act of retribution more furious than
the first, the secret pact between Ike and Alien
leader hoped to forestall.  Maybe they are
seated on Supreme Court, heads of corporations,
banks, foreign lands, already nuclear armed
and ready for the Big Bring It On.
Maybe you.  Maybe me.

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