Friday, April 10, 2015

Alan Catlin- Three Poems


Nirvana

He looked as if some
one had appointed him
Group Leader of Grey
Panthers for Kurt-the fan
club.  His xxx loss leader
tee shirt touted some
significant phrasing from
the works of the master,
something about The Light
going out when Kurt dies---
or, maybe, it was the concept
of Nirvana that totally turned 
him on, a state he was rapidly
approaching, fast feeding
                                           himself a strict diet of
donut holes by the box
full, washed down with
regular Green Mountain
black coffee mixed 50/50
with high test Anisette,
a slower death by far than
sucking on shotgun shells
but much less messy, a fact
his equivalent of Courtney
Love was sure to appreciate.



              Drinking and Driving for Pay

No one was sure if he
had coined the company's
unofficial motto, "Don't
drive drunk, leave the drunk
driving to us." But he might
as well have, the way he
drank and drove, with a
license and without, though
since they'd begun taking
those DWI laws seriously,
life wasn't filled with so many
rich experiences behind the
wheel, made earning an
honest living harder and harder
every year. Used to be you
could bribe a guy a couple of
cases of St. Paul Girl Dark
to look the other way if they
had to pull you over and found
you'd been working for three
months without a license.
Hell, in the old days, anything
was possible, more than likely
they'd just take your keys away,
if they thought you'd had too
many, and tell you to sleep it
off somewhere safe, which
usually meant in the car, any-
where not on the road, hell, who
even wants to think about climbing
stairs to get in an apartment and
besides, they had the keys.
Man, Sundays were the worst,
all those clanging church bells
and pious people dressed up for
an audience with God. You know,
God must have been a drinker
to invent a world like this one
or so he had to believe, waking up
with a worse than death hangover,
one eye swollen shut and focused
on the sordid pleasures of night
and the other, bloodshot and raw,
watching the disapproving masses
on their way to confer with the Lord.



Last Call for Alcohol

Unnaturally white,
he looks as if he'd
been giving blood
at a house party in
Dracula's castle, says,
"Not exactly.  Actually,
I've been in the hospital.
Lost somewhere like seven
or eight pints of blood
in a couple of days.
They showed me what it
looks like inside where
the ulcer burst.  Next time
I won't be shitting blood,
I'll be hemorrhaging inside
instead. If there is a next
time, it will be the morgue
instead of ER.  I'll have
an Iced Tea and a bowl
of soup." He looked as if
'sacred shitless' might
describe his demeanor.
Still this was a guy who
had received last rites
in an alcoholic coma twice,
maybe three times, in the past
and went right back on
the sauce.  Hell, what was
a couple of pints of blood
among friends compared to that?


From Brain Damage 
 

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