Alan Catlin

From Hell Night in Albany

“Ride with the wind, my friend”

I thought that what
the old ladies said when
we were growing up:

“We only see people at weddings
And funerals now.”

Was true.

All the people growing up,
in high school, college, and at work,
who I literally saw everyday
for years were now distant memories

As I knelt down at the altar
to say goodbye, I thought
Rotten Richie must have had
a terrible, wasting disease.

“Bro, you’ve never looked better.”

I swear he smiled.

We only saw each other

at funerals.  We were so far
past wedding’s it wasn’t funny.
At Rotten Richie’s wake,
I asked Clancy about some mutual
friends. “What happened to Steve?”
“Yeah, that’s a funny one.
Sarah dumped his ass after she found
a couple of dozen charge card receipts
for motels all over the state.”
“That’s really stupid. I thought Steve
had a PHD or something.”
“He did, but since when does that make
you smart? Out he went: no wife,
no job, no XKE…and then he was
just gone.”
“You’d think Sarah would have been
enough for any man: beautiful, rich,
nice personality, great job…I get it,
though, I always figured Steve for killed
by a jealous husband type.”
“Well, she was Daddy’s little girl.
If you piss him off, you piss off
her Godfather, so it amounts to the
same thing.”
“What happened to Frank?”
“He got married and they moved down
To the City.”
I thought he was gay.”
“Well, the AIDS got him early on so that
tells you a lot. You ever see the wife?”
“Not really, she’d put me off women
too. They only got married because
the families didn’t accept gay as a lifestyle.
There was a lot of inheritance riding
on that marriage from both sides.”
“Well, Richie couldn’t pull off dying young
in a motorcycle accident but not from
a lack of trying.”
“Richie told me his buddy Rudy and him
did like a yard of lines and then a couple
of six packs before they decided to go
full easy rider.”
“That’s crazy even for him.”
“That’s Richie all the way. I guess his buddy,
Rudy saw and did a lot of shit in Vietnam
he was trying to forget.”
“Well, he sure pulled that off.
Richie was a mess after the dump but Rudy
was dead.” I said.
“That clarifies a lot about Richie’s
so called amazing recuperative powers
after closing down the bars at night
and showing up for work with a twinkle
in his eyes the next day.  It wasn’t until
I saw Satan’s Sluts, a pair of refugees from 
A holiday weekend bender still dressed
for a party that ended two days ago,
looking for some grub and some liquid
pick me ups. After they ordered, hit the head
they looked renewed and had the same twinkle
in their eyes as Richie always had the day after.
They could tell I knew.”
“Want a line.”
“Nah, thanks. I’d only want more.”
“Which was true, in a way. Actually, I was
thinking I didn’t want to be as radioactive
as they were and have the AEC on my ass.”

The guy next to Rotten Richie

at the bar must have thought
he was Lester Bangs or some
other prime mover in the music
scene. Whoever or whatever he was,
Richie had heard enough about
Super Groups and rock n roll
Gods so he said, “Yeah, those guys
you mentioned are all great, but
none of them hold a candle to Carpe
Diem. Ever hear of that?”
“No man…” which was my cue to
add, “Yeah, Diem is the best.
Ungodly, guitar riffs that would make
Eric Capton weep with envy.
Jimmy Page, ha ha. Diem was like
The Yardbirds times ten.”
“Never heard of them. Where can
I find their music.”
“That’s just it, you can’t.
They were such purists, they refused
to record. Anyone caught bootlegging
it was shot on site.”
“Yeah. Man,” Richie said, “I saw a guy
get shot at Altamont. They never caught
the guy that pulled the trigger either .”
He didn’t mention it was at Altamont
Fairgrounds outside of Albany, and
the weapon was a pellet gun.
“Altamont, huh!? How come they aren’t
in any of the movies. Or on any Gimme
Shelter?”
“Their stiff was expunged. Gentleman’s
agreement. So much crazy stuff came down
after the angels went berserk it was
pretty easy to forget they were even there.
You know” here today, gone tomorrow, but
live for today”
“No shit.”
“They went way underground after that.
It was like they never existed.”
I ordered a couple of shots of Black Bush
and some Green Monster Heinken’s for
chasers, sensing it was time to move on
to the next whiskey bar. It was shaping up
to be one of those, I don’t know where we
had been or where we were heading kind of
nights. All I knew was where we were
going was probably no good on the way
to somewhere worse.

She is seven maybe eight

years old, too young
to be in the bar during Happy Hour.
She asks me for a soda,
“But I don’t have any money.
My Daddy doesn’t either,
Though he’ll run up a bill
and promise to pay when he
gets his check next Thursday.
But he won’t because he
doesn’t get paid anymore.
He’s on leave without pay
until they can figure out
a way to legally fire him.
He’s a dead beat. That’s what
everyone calls him. I know
my mommy does. She’s got
a new lawyer and a court date
to get his visitation and weekend
visits revoked. I’m just a prop
anyway. He told me that. People
wouldn’t think a guy with a little
kid was a dirtbag but he is.
He doesn’t care about me.
After today, you’ll never
See me until I turn 21.
He wasn’t always like this
my mommy says but that
doesn’t help. Not anymore.”
I gave her a soda and a bag
of chips she could take with her
when they left and waited while
she drank it before I cut him off.

 

From Once in Blue Moon Anxiety Dream Poems

Auditory

It’s hot inside though it is
supposed to be winter.
The AC isn’t working though
the overhead fans are blowing
hot air in my face and I’m in
the bar again in a dream but
the room is moving so I must be
crammed into a bus and the driver
is refusing to stop along the straightaway
once he has the pedal to the metal.
The guy across the crowded aisle
from me looks like a Hell’s Angel
with greasy long hair, facial tattoos
and sleeves, bushy beard and moustache
and he’s carrying a boom box that
is cranked up so loud my ears hurt
and I think I feel blood seeping out
the way it did in jukebox hell on
Saturday nights. I try asking him
to turn it down but he can’t hear me
and I’m wondering why the bus driver
hasn’t intervened or anyone else sitting
nearby and I think: What if I’m the only
one who can hear the music?
What then? Thinking the bus may never
stop and I’m along for the ride no matter
where it ends up.

 

Death, Dinosaurs and Draft Beer

We’re in a dormitory suite for seven,
talking about books and drinking beers
like we’re in the college bar I worked in
and notice the room has transformed to my
much smaller double, freshman year back
in the 60’s though a calendar says where actually
in a room at UB now and I’m scheduled to
give a lecture on books and beers,
as well as, tend bar at the same time.
I’m puzzled why the Dorm Director is
checking proof until I see it is Elizabeth
Warren and she’s always checking stuff.
I try to tell her that these guys graduated
years ago, and are solid citizens representing
a NY publisher. They are trying to sell
me copies of Richard Price’s new novel
as well as , a new author’s book that claims to,
literally, radiate light which I find intrguing enough
to head out to the woods to where the summer
camp was, to look for a copy.
All I can find is a garden of headless statues
and canvas bags of marble body parts cobbed
from other headless statues, though these don’t
appear to be a good match for the ones in front
of me but, feel, somehow, important to the narrative.
The more I look, the more statues I find and
The more disconnected body parts there is
among the trees where the athletic fields
should be. Someone orders a boat load of
Dinosaur BBQ, two thousand hot wings
and a keg of beer to wash it down.
I hear sirens and church bells in the distance
suggesting the service will begin shortly.
Men in black cloaks with wide brimmed hats
emerge from the shadows and it is obvious
they are defrocked priests intoxicated from
drinking the witch’s froth.  Apparently, they
will stop at nothing to avenge losses incurred
by speaking out of turn and espousing a catechism
of the doomed and the damned.  I can tell by
the way they speak that we are all sinners
in the hands of Jonathan Edward’s God.

From Surreal Automatism: automatic writing

Blue Movie 7

Pre Penguin, post-apocalyptic Burgess Meredith,
Calder mobiles with no visible connections,
Empire State Building in vertical celluloid, rising
like Sleep without dreams. Lumiere brothers
relocation experts imprints on the far side of
the conscious mind: what is seen there can only
be revealed after camera obscura highlights,
all the images upside down like life lived backwards.

Blue Tooth Moon

or the chronicles of Mars where gravity’s
rainbow goes to die, all the colored spectrum
shattered, stain glass filigree for the seas of
tranquility. Relativity won’t pull you through
the eyes of Rockwell Kent’s white whale rising,
Ahab’s spear, Time’s arrow moving backwards
through Eternity’s hour glass now that the sand
has run out and the woman in the dunes is
crying like a banshee’s wail. The red sails
of sunset are a prelude to a nuclear winter,
hoarfrost afternoon’s shipwrecked swell
south of the Cape of Good Hope. The harpooner
had it right: commission your coffin in advance:
today’s casket is tomorrow’s life raft.
Call Me, Ishmael.

 

Movie Star

Dark star. David Bowie’s last hurrah:
“I’m not here anymore.” Like The Dead.
Gerry and the boys. All those dark stars:
“Shall we go them you and I while we can?”
All the zombies standing next to me.
On the big screen, so much larger than life.
but just as dead.

 

Lucky Star

Star Gazey Pie where all the fish heads
rise from the depths beneath the crust
ad make themselves known to the heavens.
The star assigned to you at birth like
a stone, a chart, the horoscope that contains
the secrets of your Fate. The ones you got
on your tests in elementary school that
meant you’d be on the honor roll.
If only life was always like that.