Sunday, September 7, 2014

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

Space Invaders

They cruised into the bar
as if they'd been tripping
the light fantastic on some
Trans Siberian Railway of
the mind so totally fried,
their frayed filthy clothes
and near shoulder length hair
was singed at the loose ends
giving off a scent like over-
wrought skunk and death.
They were so obviously unwell
and primed for inappropriate
social behavior, I asked them
for their Red Cards, a request
that briefly slowed them down
to a near halt, "Red Cards?"
"Yeah, they're like Green Cards
or Alien Resident ID's only
these are for Space Invaders
from potentially hostile planets."
"Space Invaders?"
"Yeah, like the video game.
You must have heard of it, they
were popular in the last century,
right around the time you guys
were last straight and sober."
The look they gave me suggested
they didn't think what I was saying
was funny.  The look I was giving
them suggested I wasn't trying to be.                                    



Space Junkies

If it were Halloween, these guys
would have fit right in or even
if it had been New Year’s Eve or
Mardi Gras and they had been on
the way to some end of the world
as we know it party, but it was none
of those, not the kind of place that
dressing like Gary Glitters, Ziggy
Stardust  clones on some kind of
Velvet Goldmine club quest,
ostentatiously pierced all about their
bodies, tacky make up and costume
clothes like stiff out of Harper’s Bizarre,
Warhol’s Pandora Box wardrobe, body
art by some demented freak on speed
with a butcher’s knife instead of a tattooist’s
tools, the only discernible images, death
cultist symbols and the leader of the pack’s
Gothic lettered phrase” PISS FACTORY,
forming a semi-circle around his navel,
all of them stoned to the gills and clearly
hostile, in need of sedatives to slow
the virtual China syndrome chemical mix
threatening to flatline their vital organs,
close their bodies down, the take-me-to-
your-leader gesturing at the barman,
pointing at the back bar high octane rocket fuel
bottles, waving fifty dollar bills as an attention
getting aid, trying to bridge a considerable
language gap with guttural noise making
and even more frantic waving, succeeding
only in creating an image of Euro trash on tour,
way lost on some highway to hell they were
building as they went, oblivious to their
surroundings and determined to stay that way.

 

You could say

he was a tad
eccentric, used
to go into
McDonald's,
order up a Big
Mac cut into
four pieces &
have them wrapped
individually, makes
you wonder doesn't
it? I'm still not sure    
what was odder,
the demand or
fulfilling his request
without so much
as an eyelid flutter
though you could see
the counter people
thinking and would
you like some double
thick shakes for the long
ride home in your
space ship

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