Alan Catlin- Two Poems

The Hard Life

began for him long before

birth: his insides mutated,

all those genes his mother

used as a kind of

perverse free-form

genetics experiment,

that began in the tail end

of the 60's and hasn't ended yet.  

You could sense his conception

as a riot of bad unprotected sex,

cheap booze, and more

pharmaceuticals than a well-

stocked, on-campus infirmary.

Nothing he ever did or said

made sense, nor had he never

achieved anything like focus or

anything like a interpersonal

relationship, most ending

before they began. 

His mother claimed he hardly

ever cried as a baby once she

started him on Similac and

homemade acid.

She could tell he was grooving

on the stars, the way his eyes rolled

behind the lids and his extremities

twitched just like he was dancing.

 

A Scanner Darkly

There wasn't a fire,

crime in progress,

drug bust, sexual

assault, homicide or

911 call he hadn't

heard about on his

all frequencies scanner,

and the next morning

he'd be at the bar,

with the sweeper,

for a cold pop to tell

the whole world all

about how your neighbor-

hoods were all going

to hell in a hand basket

and how your friends,

relatives, and casual

acquaintances were all

warm sacks of shit,

not worth the efforts

expended to keep them

alive and that, hell,

when he was growing up,

Albany wasn't a bad place

for a man to have a

family and for a kid

the way he did, playing ball

and chasing tail like any

other good old american

boy, until that 911 call

he heard, about a man down

in action, a drug bust

gone bad, and the kid

they were arresting,

was his own.

Alan Catlin was a barman for thirty-four endless years, a fact he draws upon in his written work.  Revenge is sweet, the truth harsh, so it goes.