Alan Catlin- Three Poems

ax and blade

“the museum of pain doesn’t charge admission”

Out of dry desert sinkholes,

water flushed arroyo, they come

in windshield-down jeeps,

ATVs jury-rigged with high

intensity lamps, new blood sport

hunting the Milagros on the run,

those who are jacklit in no cover

washes, alkaline plains, low ridge

flats, whites of their eyes targets

for infrared scopes, heads exploding

on free range shooting contact like

over ripe melons spewing brain matter

like seeds, sackcloth shirts and blouses,

blood leeched, peppered by killshots,

one is never enough. Hunting aid

signal flares and helicopter searchlights

scan this place they are forced into

once hell is full and there is no place

else to go, these defenseless packs

of human game, each scalp taken by

axe and a blade, a trophy to be savored

back in places these patriots of freedom

and justice for all call home, these

sovereign states of lost causes and

hate crimes that have not be codified yet.

Even their children have been branded

by their creed; today’s viral youth,

tomorrow’s parents of the damned.

Playback

He was on a slow pub crawl

from ennui at noon to death in

the afternoon.  Sat slowly drinking

half pints of stout as if measuring

the last, bitter ounces of his life

a mouthful at a time.  Money was

no object given the wad he extracted

bills from to pay for each round leaving

only loose, small change on the bar

after each transaction, each glass emptied

and refilled as if placing unspent bills

on the wood was further planning

much too far in advance than what he

was he was willing to allow for.

Though he was on record as saying,

“halfs are a pussy drink. A real man

goes all the way.” Drank hard and

fast as if there were no tomorrow,

no future past, to alter his head back

plunge into insensibility, into this place

where he was going now, a place no

one ever returns from.

The Kevorkian Cocktail

Every night  a new bar, the same

bad attitude, same lethal drink.

Always freaking the locals talking wild

and crazy, a new lie for every

occasion, a different sucker punch

for the unwary. 

What he called fun was the stuff

of supermarket tabloid headlines

after sweet talking lonely heart ladies

and bent young things with more

bad habits than a cloister full

of defrocked, pregnant nuns.

Ordered what he called A Double

Ought Seven, ”A Russian vodka

martini with a large measure of

Beefeater’s Gin with Yellow Chartreuse

instead of Vermouth.  No substitutions.

I’ll know the difference. And stirred,

not shaken. I hate bruised cocktails.

That’s pussy juice. I’ll add my own

Fentanyl.” The latter said as if it were

a joke everyone would laugh about later.