Saturday, April 25, 2015

Alan Catlin- Three Poems


slum goddess

Maybe she
thought that
if she main-
lined enough
stuff dressed
like some kind
of resurrected
Warhol queen
and strutted her
stuff up & down
McDougal Street
she'd be anointed
the Official Slum
Goddess of the
Lower East Side
or maybe she'd
get so strung
out, so hyper
no one would
notice or care
what she did
until she dressed
up as some low
budget super girl
and did a swan
dive from the top
              floor of some
closed-for-the-
duration tenement
high rise to see
if the stash of
super balls sewn
into her garments
and bundled in
her cowl would
make her rebound
as high as she
felt, as high
as the moon.


flower children

The look had been
new

fashionable in the 60's

The Songs of Innocence
and Experience          

verses tattooed amid
the Wildflowers and
cosmic symbols

the yin and the yang
of their bodies

though,
now, after decades
of aging
and abuse,

the look was
burned out

heavily weighted
onto the experience
side

downcast
as sun
flowers weary

of time


She looked as if

" who can hear the teeth in the roses
gnash, forecasting winter? old woman
who carries heaven in one plain brown
bag and hell in the other." Jack Evans

an evil higher
Authority had
been playing all
her deep sueno
canciones in a key
of metaphysical
distress, time
signatures so far
over the line
and out there
her extremities
had begun to twitch
in anticipation
of the next series
of notes, you
could see that
she was trying
to hold her hands
out for a 21st
century version
of alms for the poor
but her body &
brain were so
out of synch, it
wouldn't happen
in a million
years, there seemed
no point trying
to aid & abet,
she had already
received her life
sentence & there
was no hope
for a last minute
reprieve.

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