In the first floor bungalow
of the Mother's Finest Motor Hotel,
Lenny chews nails to the quick,
channel surfs, and listens
to the Russian newlyweds one floor up
who've begun their afternoon clockwork
fuckfest again on the big
overhead Bob Dylan brass bed--
making ancient springs squeal like
streetcar wheels straining
to crest Nob Hill.
The wall-mounted
Samsung in Lenny's room
shows an impossibly-young
Nick Nolte
hunchbacked and hobbling
across a Mojave arroyo
as he clutches a duct-taped,
blood-soaked loaf of heroin
in fullback's forearm
grip, grunting:
"hup!… two!… three!..." like
Neal Cassady
counting railroad ties
at the very hour
of his death.
When the ceiling starts to shake,
Lenny wanly rakes two-day cheek
stubble, and briefly considers
the nine hot checks he wrote
last week in order to float
a desperate Super Bowl bet he's
banking on to get him to Florida
for a reunion with his only
daughter he's met
like once
at the funeral of her
junior high school
band director,
and Lenny vividly
recalls the fog-shrouded
gravesite where, half-drunk,
he whisper-slurred at her:
"say now, what instrument is it
you play again sweetie?"…
And how these words had
double-crossed his daughter's
sea-green eyes
and streaked her cheeks the
deepest shade of red!-- though
he'd thought it only a felicitous
and fatherly thing
to say at the time
until retrospect began
running it through and
through his
track-marked mind
unforgiven.
***
On the Fox affiliate
channel eleven when
last he checked it
was third quarter,
the Vikings still
hadn't scored,
and Lenny
is starting to get
genuinely frightened
of what he'll find if
he goes there again.
Instead he
watches Nolte
die magnificently
on the screen,
as the credits start to roll with
the title theme by Credence
Clearwater Revival-- and Lenny
wonders if the Nolte
who made this movie ever,
ever glimpsed
his own spooky
scarecrow-in-a-
train-wreck DUI
mug shot while staring
a la Nostradamus
into the creamy-pink depths of some
smoked salmon pate on toast points
that the pig-tailed, bell-bottomed
Scandinavian Girl Friday would
deliver with Perrier come twilight
to his location trailer-- or that one day
he'd be more renowned
for this mug shot
than all the rest of his fine
life's work combined.
He clicks the flicker faster
and faster through channel after
channel with volume
maxed to match
the newlyweds
who are really
getting into it now,
and Lenny reminds himself
how forgers in prison they don't
hardly get to listen while men
and women make love and
that's just for starters and
oh, if only
he could conjoin
the Young Nolte,
and the
Mug Shot Nolte
like formaldehyde twins
grafted to the twitchy
double chin of
Edward G. Robinson
right before he shows his
queen-high straight flush
to a stricken Steve McQueen
in "Cincinnati Kid."
If he could manage
something like that,
maybe they could all
get together-- the Noltes,
McQueens, and Cassadys
comparing notes with every
Lenny he's ever been
in a long and sorry lifetime,
and maybe a couple
wannabe John Fogertys
would show up then
to sing off-key lullabies in
shrieking falsetto harmony
that ask rhetorical
questions about
stopping rain and
just who and
when and
then
repeated
for the benefit of the aqua blue
zygote on a pinhead of pre-cum
up there in the second floor
bungalow of the Mother's
Finest Motor Hotel-- because
every big bang
deserves a little bouncy
soap bubble song bridge
debriding the shopworn
rugburn accents on
Cheap Thrill,
Chemical and Special Effect--
which have never
proven to stop Time
any better
than the parents
are doing right
now, in this
instant,
and it is
difficult indeed
not to want to
pull for Lenny,
as he gargles on a snot gobbet
of apprehension-- thrusting his remote
control at the screen like duck-billed
zebra on fifty yard line making the
universal first down sign
when the Russians finally hit
their climax together
amid swirls of
ceiling-joist plaster dust
that rain down on
Lenny's eyes
squeezed
tightly shut
against the overtime
field goal on Fox
that has most
certainly
fixed his latest
fate-- but this
of course is
another story.
You who would injure me
with graduation tassel stitches
in polygraph pattern on the brow
of botched hair plug; you who
bring glossy jacket flap blurbs
and Valentine captions enfolded
in the secret sweaty
Frat Handshake,
indulge me for just
a moment while I take in the tableau
of mid-afternoon dusk through my
picture window where
a couple of
shrieking king-sized crows
in the skeletal backyard
birch branches
are having a taffy pull with the day-old
viscera of an electrocuted squirrel,
while the sky seethes obscenely always
at this hour the color of spent
charcoal being doused
by the dark… by
degrees.
Are you calling
my attention
to the shunned dwarf sycophants
in Hefty bag Klansman hoods
who've taken up sniper positions
behind the frozen power pole
transformers?
Is commiseration foremost
on your mind?
Do you sometimes get lonely enough
to wish a spectral shape shift
would allow you to crawl inside
the most natural jackhammer
glory hole in your sub-basement
cement wall and suck
yourself off until Summer?
Have you guessed yet
at the grotesque truth
of curdled eggnog
and insatiable cunt?
Then listen
closely for what
sounds next like a
cross-wired
dentist drill
sputtering on an
un-numbed
gum nerve
is really just me
wheezing through
the complex kindling nest
of scars on my lungs--
scored there,
each in turn,
over time by you-- and it's cool
to leave a message but I won't
be hanging out tonight due to
the Dick Clark Times
Square Glitter Ball thing
which I absolutely love to watch
alone so much it's become
something of a tradition
around here.
Beneath the Belagio
fountain shower of spastic
pundit spit deftly scented
with the scrotum sweat
of Paul Wolfowitz,
the man of the hour hideously wiggles
teapot ear lobes with nothing but
willpower and cheek,
while laconic Rolling Stones roadies
double-dosed with zoloft and methadone
stack the glass cases chock full
of writhing serpents
on a trapeze stage
guy-wired to the glowing
3D Seigfreid and Roy
knowing-gaze billboard.
Watch closely
as he raises his right hand
like an auctioneer swearing
oaths at 78 rpm and rising
in the foamy throes of
every snake handler's
rapture
and it goes something like:
"…Nam yo ho ho
ring gay quo no play al go
fair fee fo fi oh my homo
budaba bunkah da bustah ba
dub a ya widama sadama
bidama whaddya giv a ma
sadama bidama… Go!"
And by now
the bull snakes
are humping
his rawhide-chaps
harmlessly
as hula hoops,
while sopping wet women
crotch-clamp enumerated
glowstick mood-ring
fuck fingers on eager
musky wrist
swivel--
domino-swooning all up
and down the quaking aisles
of the heavy arid
amphitheater.
No matter
that his words sound like
Romanian revival gibberish
from a bullhorn shitting
goat cheese and rubber bullets,
it really is better
that we do not know
what the defense undersecretary
just did with a cattle prod
to the pesky heckler
in the catacombs.
The main thing to keep in mind?
Habeas Corpus is a swinging
country western line dance
nightspot on the Gulf Coast,
the next items up for bid
are Civil Discourse
and Due Process
in short order--
and you can
lean in real close
to try and catch what's
being said next but
it won't do a bit
of good; what
happens here
stays here
and it'll all
be over
before you
know it anyway.
Dennis Mahagin's debut poetry collection, Grand Mal, is forthcoming from Suspect Thoughts Press. His work appears widely in both web-based and print publications. He lives and works in Washington State.