Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Alan Catlin- Three Poems


 March Madness

 I guess if Alice fell down
 the rabbit's hole following
 a March Hare today, she'd
 wake up in a bar like this one
 with an extra large screen
 showing NCAA playoff games
 that would never seem to end.
 She'd be sitting at the bar
 nursing a LIT, slowly sinking
 into a narcotic state,
 the Cheshire smile of the bartender
 nearly invisible inside
 enveloping cigarette smoke.
 Soon, this dude from Brooklyn
 will post up at the bar
 with a stool and throw it
 hard over the wood taking
 with it bottles, lights and
 a mirror not even Alice would
 care to step through.
 That's one March hare who
 wouldn't get too far running
 down Quail Street with an:
 off with his head call,
 to the cops on their radios
 and there would be no one,
 not even a lawyer to save him.



His idea of blending in

was to dress in Droogie
whites, a black bowler hat,
slightly askew, an elephant
sized codpiece, an exaggeration
if there ever was one.
Had a pair of carbide steel
blades strapped to each ankle,
a short sword in a holster over
his left shoulder for easy
access, quick draw action.
Painted kohl black eyelids
on his face, wore red contacts
in his eyes for a down home
and feral look. Looked sated
and slightly stunned after
two fun filled nights on
the prowl and another at
the milk bar sucking at the
ceramic tits of naked ladies
on display near the booths
they inhabited as if they were
their personal place. Feared nothing
and took whatever they pleased,
on the hunt, as the Lawless Ones,
where everything was permitted
if you had the right weapons and
the nerve to use them. Thought
adolescence was forever and
a life of violent crime was one
without consequence or
recrimination.  Found themselves
in a place with bars where rules
were for other people and
the only way to survive was to
learn to love the abuse, a talent
that would serve them well in
a life after, as police officers,
soldiers of fortune, peers of
the realm.



Wild at Heart

The sleeves on his arms
suggested a personal, up close
and personal, history of violence.
A tale, no doubt, continued on parts
of his body covered by filthy clothes
stained by rough riding oil slick roads,
sleeping where he collapsed after
imbibing a quarter keg of beer and
enough Ketamine to fell a pair of
wild Bronc riders in a Texas prairie
dust storm. The tapestry in ink on his
back told of exploits only a trained
psychotic killer could hope to replicate.
The pictography read like a Russian
mafia skin job, a life story of a man
who found himself somehow transported
from the steppes into a clan of far west
America clan of skinheads. Decided he
liked their team ethic and core values
as they closely matched his own.
Was accepted as a walking recruitment
poster for limited IQ, wannabe bad asses
with identity issues who were virtually
useless on their own, but valuable as
contributing members of a pack. 
Could channel a lifetime of hate for all
those people not of his kind, and translate
it into astonishing acts of extreme violence.
Claimed he would try the bullet trick with
live ammo at the next biker bake out of
he didn’t put his bike down at a hundred per.
Rode like his helmet was a shaped tin can
EMT’s could use to put his brains in once
he popped his skull.  A memorial of beer cans,
animal skulls, and spare parts from wrecked
rides mark where he left the road for good.


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