Alan Catlin- Three Poems

A Near Miss with Vincent's Ear

I figured he was

following a personal

torrent of spring

into the bar, a refugee

from a South Eastern

Asia range war he was

still fighting in his mind

as if he had been to

the real thing and in

homage to his ghost

buffalo soldier bros,

he had donned clean

camouflage fatigues,

a red hair covering

bandanna and a pair

of aviator glasses con-

veniently missing lens

for up close and personal

seeing the nitty gritty

of how his latest scam

was coming down,

"Check these out.

This is the kind of

alcohol you should be

stocking and drinking.

All the celebs are doing

it: Tom Jones, Barry White

Otis Redding, Jim Croce----"

"You forgot Ricky Nelson."

"What?" "Never mind.

Van Gogh Vodka, huh.

               What is this? Flavored

firewater to cut your ears

off to?""It's what the Brothers

drink, my man.  I don't see

no brothers here, now, do I?"

"You don't see anyone here.

Especially with those glasses on."

"Are you dissrespecting me?"

"Don't see anyone else

around to dissrespect so it

must be you."

"That's just what I would

expect from someone who

'wants to turn the country

of Yugoslavia into Otis

Redding'"

"The only country Otis is

turning into these days is

Atlantis, ten thousand leagues

under the dock of the bay."

It was a crappy, mixed metaphor,

but it seemed to strike a lot

closer to home base on Planet

Nine or wherever he was,

than the Vincent's ear one,

so I had to label it a successful

one, as these things go.

I didn't even have to

explain to him how much

better he would be able to

read his brochures by street

light, standing on the double

yellow lines of Western Avenue

then he could in here as

I usually did, just before

dialing 911.

The Other Side of Nowhere New York

She spent her time between

Long Island and Paradise and

he divided his between New York

and Never Never  Land, their primary

functions in life: clubbing, texting,

doping and screwing, often all at

the same time, like performers in

a new kind of Wild Wild West Show

on the Lower East Side of a depleted

ozone layer in their brains curdling like

milk left in the sun so long the smell

was just this side of Johnny Rotten three

days dead and unattended, a rankness

that went unnoticed by everyone that

they came in contact with, all suffering,

as they were, from the same kind of disease

of inattention and excess, all claiming

to know the real story of what happened

with Syd and Nancy, how the body double

died and the happy couple escaped upstate

to do time in the foothills of the Adirondacks

and the Twilight Zone.

They Came Back

The last few people that came into

the bar were like characters out of

a Hermann Broch novel, Sleepwalkers

and circus acts, side show performers

with their one trick ponies, their novelty

tricks learned at the feet of illustrated men,

bearded ladies, ten penny geeks nothing

was too degrading for.  After awhile it felt

as if someone had isolated the bar and

the drinkers, by drawing a kind of sheet

between them and the outside world to

show movies on, creating two dimensions

in one, overlapping realities almost

indistinguishable, one from the other.

Wee Gee’s off duty black and white

performers sipping cocktails at the bar,

images transposed on their faces of all

those people who had died now inexplicably

revived, legions of them parading in the street,

laconic, wan, non-threatening but intent

on resuming lives interrupted, lacking only

a vital animation that made them human once.

Their failure to interact, to readjust, finally

compelling them to seek their own kind,

the people sitting at the bar, drinking as

if there were no yesterday, no tomorrow,

all of them listening to music, in silence,

only they can hear.