Alan Catlin- Three Poems

Dancing Freak

Maybe they were teaching

ballroom dancing over at

the Psyche Center and his

section had let our early or

else he had made his escape

by way of the Frances de Sale’s

shop and scored some tux

and tails O’Malley’s Funeral

Parlor had stopped using for

display purposes.  I half expected

most of the suit to be missing

in the back like one of those

hospital gowns he got to wear

around the ward, not exactly

a fashion statement to be sure,

but what he was used to.  Or else,

it was his lucky day to score

the whole suit for his ambition,

for his dreaming Fred Astaire

fantasy, though he wasn’t likely

to be scoring any Ginger Rogers

for his partner for those dance

tunes he imagined were waiting

on the jukebox for the right couple

to be stepping out to, not that he

had a buck for playing songs, real

or imagined, or that he could read

anything more complicated than

a Dick and Jane primer despite

claiming to know Dick real well

and Jane too, back in the good old

days before Ginger, Top Hat and

the Great War that ended it all.

 

     Self-Portrait with Vincent

     I tell him to eliminate the greens

     but he paints in a flock of

     black birds over a field of yellowing wheat

     "No more night in my eyes."

     I say, but he gives me a starving

     family eating potatoes.

     "If you don't like that image there

     is a shot of absinthe waiting

     for you at the bar."

     "Try to see me in a different light;

     perhaps in pencil, black and white."

     Laughing he slashes off an ear.

     "There is no room in this world

     for such an absurd thing

     as that portrait."

     I say, "There is money in it, maybe

     enough for an evening with a whore.

     Maybe two."

     Smiling, he says, "Perhaps. Right now,

     I'm busy with the razor."

    

     I assure him, I'd be back with gold coins

     but I lied.

     So now, I'm stuck with this portrait

     in ghastly greens and white.

     I hate to admit to a likeness but

     there it is.

     Check out the eyes.

     They will look straight through you.

A Day Doing Life in a Bar

Cigarette smoke in the bar

like fog over a bay of beer

that never burns off.

Drinker’s heads turned toward

the flat screen TV where race

results of a dozen flat tracks

scroll by in rapid succession;

torn losers on the wood along

with spent matches, change

from a ten, bottled beer rings,

daily racing forms folded to a card

as the bar door opens and shuts

revealing some dude no one

had ever seen before and he

is saying, “Car broke down.

Could use some help.   Don’t

know squat about cars.”

Nothing moves but pairs of eyes

in the back bar mirror,

“They let anyone in here now,

that it?”

 “Must be.”

“Poor fuck must be lost.”

“Doesn’t know how lost he be.”

“Or how lost he’s gonna be.”

“Yeah, man, like way lost.”

The stranger standing just inside

the bar looking like a found out

fool on an errand, mutely watching

the hunched backs of the drinkers

waiting for the bar door to open

and close once more as if this were

a developing scene from a bad

horror flick destined not to turn out

well for all involved especially not

for the stranger.  The door opens and

shuts. More chits are torn up

and more beers ordered. 

Life goes on.