Must have been New Year's Eve, nineteen
ninety nine. Remember?
We sat around a booth in that bar, Kelly's
Olympian, tossing beau coup Alka Seltzer
pellets into a big bowl of red wine. Plop,
plop fizz and a hooker whose giggle was
the shizzle, a wheeze, kept asking you
pretty please to say "tutelage"
and "effervesce"
in your phony Canadian accent,
like Peter Jennings with ax to grind
gently; and evidently cracked a girl
up, especially when I confessed to
impotence engendered by meth,
and what William Clinton did
with his cigar. Couldn't stop
thinking about it. Remember?
"Well, I'm through with sex too," you said,
"my own special brand of nihilism..." Tossed
a clean pellet into the stew, a few whatchama
callit, tall kitchen
matches, scratch off
lottery tickets.
Tipped up soggy
loser after loser after
loser.
"But what... what about your backed-up
ducts? ...Your jismic goo and student loans?"
cackled Party Girl, (she called herself Monica
Moans! Remember?) tilting cleft chin up,
up, up into
fluorescence. Must have been about 2
hours later, I climaxed crisply, upon her pert
cleavage, her bobbing-for-apples. At the stroke
of midnight, I turned
celibate, and stayed that way
ever since; don't you dare call
me fucking ... don't you dare
call me
Prince, honestly
some men, they stare
into the abyss...they whisper
"Spodi - Odi ... Spodi - Odi... Spodi - Odi"
— ice blue slates wiped of memory, but my
newest name? Mostly resembles a medulla
oblongata, whorled by foam, wrought by
flame. Still the same old
shudder, mister shredder: about half
crazy but always the music, what I'm
about, so please wear it ...
well, at least try to hear
me out.
Sitting on an LG dryer,
doing my level best
Hepburn;
The setting won't go any
higher,
abreast
of
t r e m o l o ...
I never learn.
~
Yet Newman's own
cobb salad, includes
water cress, leeks, tangy
crayfish legs, and artichoke
heart; a constellation
of Bac 'O
bits, and 50
hard boiled
eggs.
~
Dear sweet
Hopper (the actor not
painter) in apocalypse
now looks
skyward
where helicopters dangle
cargo nets
for off - loading
succulent
cows.
~
At the Jackson
5 mansion in
Universe 83,
Michael and me
drink
chamomile tea;
the gloves stay
on;
he catches about a billion
blessed
winks. ;)
~
Norma Jean, I mean
Marilyn ... swear to
Christ the non pareil
syntax of erotic-
ism,
sigh and
schism;
her hot
panty vector
cloaked in sewer
steam,
every Ohio
nocturnal
sunbeam.
~
Buttterfield ate
it all, ate it all
wafer thin
pancakes in
Grand Marnier.
Liz Taylor
spritzed, made a
call,
her diamond-dusted aura
teleports to Belize in the
fall.
~
Meanwhile Earnhardt
Senior, rides
flat out
on the salts
in model
T, teaching
James Dean how to tap
the wall by pulling
power slides.
There are
the Others,
too
too
many like
Jim Carroll said,
not merely dead
but people
who
died ...
A nice warm
day, I'll be going
outside
to pray.
Dennis Mahagin's poems and stories have appeared in dozens of notable literary venues, including Exquisite Corpse, Stirring, 3 A.M., 42opus, Absinthe Literary Review, Catalonian Review, Night Train, Metazen, Ghazal Page, Smokelong Quarterly, and Storyglossia. Look for a chapbook of Dennis' poetry, Fare, set to be released in 2011 by Redneck Press. Details are available on the Fried Chicken and Coffee website. A full-length poetry collection, Grand Mal, is forthcoming from Rebel Satori Press. Visit Dennis on the Web at fourhourhardon.blogspot.com.