Neil Fulwood- A Poem

Rating the Hotel California on TripAdvisor

 

No vacancies at the Heartbreak Hotel

and Lonely Street a dead end:

a coat of paintwork in it

backing the RV up to the intersection.

 

Two limeys failing at the American dream.

It didn’t appeal, another night

kipping among the redwoods, no water

or sani-dump or electricity hook-up.

 

Another morning stripped to the waist

over a sink the size of a cereal bowl,

upper torso, pits, the quick scrape

of a half-arsed shave. We were after

 

a hotel, a motel, a cheap room

above a liquor store, anywhere

with a functioning shower and a toilet

that operated on some other principle

 

than chemical deconstruction.

It was a desert highway, dark, something

rising up from the road or the earth

in a warm haze. A slow lazy guitar line

 

unspooled from the radio. In the distance

a sound like a carillon, but nothing

for miles around to suggest a church,

a monastery, anything with a belltower.

 

The parking lot shimmered

like a swimming pool. The concierge

had the smile of a pimp being interviewed

by the Grim Reaper.

 

The lobby ululated. The bellboy

didn’t look like he even knew what

a Lambretta was. The carpets

were patterned like Kubrick.

 

The room was 70s Euro-cheese horror,

Edwige Fenech promising heaven

before a mask with a straight-razor

straight-up ends you. The revelries

 

in the courtyard are best not mentioned.

The night porter’s vaguely Germanic lisp

bothered us. We only figured on staying

the one night. That was a while ago.

 

Checking out is like something from Kafka. 

My brief third person bio: Neil Fulwood was born in 1972, the son of a truck driver, the grandson of a miner. For some weird reason, he started writing poetry. Even more weirdly, some of it's been published.