Lastmansampler

l a s t

s t a n d i n g

m a n poetry by alan catlin

Š2015 Alan Catlin Cover painting by Gene McCormick All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of written reviews.

ISBN 978-1-929878-53-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015957675 First edition

PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733 www.lummoxpress.com Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgements People and The Hole appeared In Parting Gifts, People was reprinted by the Clark Street Review After the Closing of the Dime Museum… was accepted by Parting Gifts, Eviction Notice, “Son,” he said, and Swing Low Sweet Chariot appeared in Art Mag, ”children in the schoolyards, what horrors they endure” appeared in Blue Collar Review, The Man Without Qualities appeared in 5 AM, The House of a Thousand Speakers appeared in Concho River, Bonita and Clyde in Slate, Deadenders in Pinyon Poetry Review, Listening to the radio at 1:35 am in Skidrow Penthouse, “death gets as close as any lover has” Jenny Mag, The Usual Suspects Up the River Strange Days, Strange Days and Blue Skies, White Boy, the 300 Club, The Beast and The Outsider accepted for Art Mag, Roadkill and Ironweed for Lummox 3, Morning After the Night Before for Street Value On line publication include Windy Nights, The Walls and Weekend Warrior in My Favorite Bullet, State of Grace and “even her pubic hair looked aggressive” in Red Fez, The Other Side of Nowhere New York in Asphodel Madness, Edgar Allan Nobody in Carnival, Lady Bowlers in the Lounge in Trailer Park Review, Storm Story in Rusty Truck, The Reprieve in Underground Voices. The Body, Strange Days, and The Boys on Dead Snakes. Lalafellujah, Bright Lights and Dragons, Stretched Out on the Pavement…., Black Leather Jacket and Motorcycle Boots and One Stop Neighborhood Banking on Zombie Logic Review Many of these poems are currently under consideration, individually, at various magazines Unattributed title quotes are by Charles Bukowski Many of these poems appeared, sometimes in other forms, in a weekly online, closed Poetry forum, under the auspices of Clark Street Review, Ray Foreman editor

It’s Too Late

alan Catlin

It’s Too Late To relive four years of being drunk To take back all the things I must have said And all that I did that cannot be undone It’s too late To forget all those nights of jesus christ found in a pint bottle of Smuggler’s Scotch with a History sitting on a bus stop bench sharing shots with the real gone guys eyes so red breath so bad if their Adam’s apples weren’t moving when they swallowed you might think they were dead It’s too late To avoid all the burnouts living amid the rubble and the junk on the ruined lots where the bus terminal once stood Of listening to all the get down and get funky tunes on carryall tape players Ghetto blasters battery powered music machines a chorus of dead angels sang to as they rose to greet the dawn Calling on me as I walked the last mile to the five thirty in the A of M to wait for the bus to come rolling out of the densest fog of a downtown in the mind Along with the sirens on Quail Street calling after Calling for the passengers and drivers of the skidding cars that stopped against the hard ass concrete bakery wall on the corner of Washington and Quail near where the bag ladies waited for thrift shop throwaways Yesterday’s stale remains

2—

Last Man Standing

It’s too late Not to live nearby that bakery those summer nights listening to the to the dead arrive on impact The stray cats rutting in the backyard jungle weeds The air so thick and polluted and dead the apartment walls heaved And the ceiling dropped The attic crawlspace unloaded all the sodden burdens of rot and junk and rodent life that spilled down down down Where a twelve pack of beer didn’t make a dent in the map of the Pacific Ocean floor pinned above the marriage bed The nightmares a week long and longer Never ending not even after the punched out bathroom mirror told it like it was The mornings after The nights before It’s too late To go back and change the details The small ones and the larger ones The ice packs and the drug buys What came before and after Then and now Too late It’s always too damn late

—3

alan Catlin

Windy Night Outside the yellow cab is honking, engine running, portable radio tuned into Classic Oldies medleys Freddy and the Dreamers on Furman Street ‘I’m Telling You Now’ far past midnight, streetlights shot out again-all the better not to see you inAnd the cabbie is waiting for the girl in the house across the way with no power, not three minutes inside, dropped off by another cab Same company different driver his tail lights barely vanished Him barely settled into the primo spot in Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot where he counts his cash, arranging the bills, hearing the call for Furman, same address, same empty house, so what? she tips big time, No questions asked this time of night A fare is a fare A tip is a tip Especially a big one Though if he had to testify--Well that’s another story for another time and place And she’s on her cell, talking as she locks up, hustles to the new cab, backpack she didn’t have when she went in slung over one shoulder As she slams the door, giving an address across town, in The Projects No Man’s Land For pizza delivery guys, sub shops, Chinese take out No man’s land ever since the last guy got wasted at a bogus ghost town vacant apartment address

4—

Last Man Standing

Four juvenile offenders with baseball bats Not Louisville Sluggers, aluminum bats, “Motherfucker dented my bat” One kid said Another said, “We didn’t mean to waste no dude. Just wanted to like mess him up a bit like.”

Like Like what Like for fun: Two broken kneecaps, ten fractured ribs, shattered jaw, compound this and that, caved in skull, disarticulations Dead father of three children with a widow at home waiting for a police report That would read, “Man slaughtered in the first degree.”

For what?

Twenty-three dollars, two orders of egg rolls, four cans of Diet Pepsi, a combo dinner, Shrimp and Snow Peas, General Tso’s Chicken----They drank the sodas Got high But they didn’t touch the food.

—5

alan Catlin

92 degrees and naked We can hear them on their porch listening to their ultra-bass modulated, amplified exaggerated repetitious noise rap they think makes them mean and ugly smoking the joints they brazenly rolled all day out there when the light was better And all their friends were into stopping by on their kid’s bikes on foot in their window rattling sound surround stereo systems on wheels with their cash for the flash goods exchanged for well-folded large denomination dinero a means of transaction they’d perfected in a lifetime of making deals and practicing slick moves along with all their bullshit jive talking bad acting in one group home after another from juvie to adult lockdown without missing a beat Why it seems just the other day they were like four years old and scoring daddies roll your own, smoke your own goods running nickel bags and copping lids as soon as they were old enough to walk the thinking being no Po leece officer yet popped a kid in diapers for possession

6—

Last Man Standing

yet the kind of thinking that earned you hard time on a Federal rap for possession of pounds, kilos, dude, not ounces of ice, weapons too and nearly a half a mil in cash the whole nine yards It was a rap so solid no amount of well spent dough spread around the beat was going to make it go away like most of the other ones had And one by one the kids were getting popped too Going down for felonies multitudinous and various We can only hope they’ll all be gone by the end of summer and we can open the windows and not hear that shit they got going on over there listen to our Horowitz, our Watts our Gould The Masters

—7

alan Catlin

The Walls I’ve never been so down and out I couldn’t put a roof over my head I’ve passed out a few times on the way home from sleazebag bars Woke up a few times in bed or on the floor covered in mud maybe half-undressed not so much asleep as still passed out in a coma wondering at the kindness of whatever strangers had brought me home Never did find out who they were or why they took pity Why they helped me out and why they never took a thing though they could have that is if I had anything worth taking but a couple of books and an album or two which was about the extent of my possessions I could have frozen to death more than a few times Most of my worst drunks came in the dead of the worst Goddamned winters known to man So when that counselor lady asked me if I ever did binge drinking I had to pause and think And she added in my mid-pause, “You know, when you don’t know where you were for like days and nights at one time?”

And I thought to myself, “Well, those way passed out deals were like in college everyone knows that what happened in college stays in college It’s like Vegas, you know what I mean?”

I’m so way beyond college now what happened then like doesn’t even count

8—

Last Man Standing

Not really So instead I say, “Depends upon what you mean by binge drinking” I’m thinking, “Long term, daily maintenance, buzz control, drinking morning, noon and night isn’t binge drinking when it’s like part of a routine A schedule, right?”

She’s thinking what she thinks, what’s written in that stupid book she’s been studying So I have her define her terms precisely and I can see we can come to an understanding that my drinking every day from like1976 to 1989 wasn’t out of control, I mean I knew where I was, who I was and what I was doing all that time; a real long term relationship was no aberration, no black out, no fugue state which by definition meant it wasn’t binge drinking No Sir, just plain old Drinking Her definitions not mine

—9

alan Catlin

Not to Worry: a story of my life All those nights I used to roll on home on the milk train On the last bus from one circle of hell to another Climbing off at 2 AM or thereabouts A half dozen blocks from where the house was to confuse the other bastards on board Better safe than sorry Better me walking and them ignorant of where I lived All those just another nights wasted working Doing battle in the trenches A couple of To Go bottles of beer artfully concealed in denim jacket pockets for protection from my fellow passengers Never met a man yet who didn’t respect the business end of a broken bottle And you could always drink the ones you didn’t have to break Those couple of hours before dawn to be used to finish the business of getting good and drunk Writing longhand with the spare bedroom door closed Cigarettes burning A quart bottle of scotch half-empty for the beers to wash away Once the paper blurred and the words started to run together Some of those nights I could hear them next door Her saying, “I don’t want to.”

“Not that. I told you no way.”

Him saying, “Roll over, bitch. When did you get so high and mighty?”

“Since I got pregnant with your child.”

“That’s something you can get fixed. I must have told you that a hundred times but you never listen to anything I have to say.”

10—

Last Man Standing

“I do when it makes sense which is less and less often these days.”

“I’ll show you something that makes a lot of sense if you don’t do what I want.”

“I’m not one of your high performance cars you can ride any time you feel like it.”

“At least with one of those, you fill ‘em up and they go where you want, as long as you want and they don’t give you any back talk.”

“Yeah, and knowing you, when they run out of gas or get wrecked in some stupid accident, you’ll leave ‘em by the side of the road and get another one you can run right into the ground.”

“Don’t tempt me, woman, I’m not in the mood.”

“Well, neither am I.” That’s usually when the physical part of the fighting starts in Usually when I figure it’s way past time for me to turn in So when they move out under the cover of darkness I’m not surprised People are always moving in and out of this neighborhood at night There’s usually a good reason why Two single guys, an older man and an adult son, move in after the couple You never see them and they don’t make a lick of noise Two twelve packs and cable TV and they’re good to go My guess is they don’t even have beds just couches with cup holders they crash on Sometimes I wonder if the couple kept the baby If they gave it a name I sure as hell hope not

—11

alan Catlin

“in the story he tells, the cold is the truth” —Erica Wagner He said, “You’ve never lived until you’ve been dead.”

I agreed After all it was his bottle we were drinking out of I agreed Even though I had no idea what he was talking about “Ever smoke a roll your own?” He asked “No, man. Can’t we go somewhere else to do this? I’m freezing my ass off.”

“We could. Smoke this and it won’t matter.”

So we did and he was right It didn’t matter that it was who-knew-what-time after midnight, ten below out there among the yews and the family crypts and the monuments to war heroes and patriots so long forgotten the mold had claimed their family names It didn’t matter that the wind was blowing so hard it would make a banshee hoarse when she screamed and washing away the taste required more sweet wine that either of us cared to think about “You ever know anyone who died?” He asked “Sure, man. Who hasn’t?”

“I mean like our age?”

“Shit, yeah. There’s a war on, haven’t you heard?”

It was 1968 Guys our age were dying all the time

12—

Last Man Standing

“Why do you think we’re here?” He said.”Smoking this shit if not to forget about that damned war. And a whole lot of everything else too.”

“Well, it’s working big time. I can barely move.”

“You’d better be able to. You’re way too heavy to carry and I don’t just mean how much your body weighs.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m serious, I’d leave you here if I had to. Who knows when they’d miss you. Or when they’d find you. I’m sure as hell not coming back here. Nor for you or anyone else. Not alive anyway.”

I laughed, thinking he was kidding And he laughed as well, knowing he was not A few years later he offed himself in a spectacular way. Took a few with him too.

Who knew what he was thinking when he checked out or if he was thinking at all Looking back, I think it was like 50/50 whether he brought me out to that graveyard to die with him or just to get stoned out of our minds It didn’t seem to make much difference to him Maybe he just thought it just wasn’t the day to die

—13

alan Catlin

Sad Story Fire on Division One block over from Furman almost perpendicular to here Every emergency vehicle in the city somehow involved Fighting the flames or covering the bodies Cop cars blocking off the street Caution lights flashing like a carnival gone crazy with heat All six kids living there died They say the boyfriend probably did it Was sick of all those kids not his messing with his life The oldest was pregnant too She was all of sixteen maybe That one might have been his, though The kid’s mother doesn’t know squat about squat She’s like just so traumatized and terrified and bummed Fucked up in spades It could have been her not getting out of there like all the others She could be pregnant too but it’s hard to tell the way she’s built She wasn’t much to look at but still a woman That’s all the matters to some men You could easily say the same about him with the genders reversed A local independent funeral home says not to sweat it They’ll take care of all the arrangements All the gruesome details We’ll work out an-at-cost deal later

14—

Last Man Standing

After the funerals, fund raisers held Bank accounts set up Local TV stations tell you where to send Who to call Everyone had to agree it was a terrible tragedy Walking by the boarded up house Still boarded up three years later The unsolved arson shuffled into a cold case file The cops had lots of suspicions but not much in the way of real evidence The survivors stayed with relatives for a few weeks after the interments Moved on to friends for awhile after that Quietly closing one bank account Then another Blowing town with so much as a thank you very much Don’t pay one lousy cent towards the funeral costs Or anything else for that matter Gave new meaning to the phrase: dead beats Who knows what will happen with the uninhabitable house The fallen-to-ruin memorials out front with names and dates still attached fading to nothing

—15

alan Catlin

Now I used to drink to forget but all it did was make me remember what I was trying to forget and forget what I was trying to remember And I’d wake up so hung over I’d hate myself for living this goingnowhere-life and pound some hair-of-the-dog Which made me blame others for what I was doing to myself for remembering all of the shit I was trying to forget And I’d have to drink more to settle myself down Maybe scotch, maybe beer, maybe half a bottle of wine depending upon whether I had to work that day or not Red wine and beer usually did it for a work day Stopped my hands from shaking anyway so I could pop the pills I needed to keep going well going for a few hours anyway and maybe keep something solid down Maybe Keeping stuff down got to be a problem as time went on Even like water wouldn’t stay down Those were scary bad days Withdrawal days when I heard music no one else could hear Heard it getting louder and louder and louder the longer I went without a drink Sometimes the bands in my head were heavy metallists like Black Sabbath something like an Ozzy screaming from the depths of a place lower than hell Sometimes it was ‘We Won’t Get Fooled Again’ screams of the tortured and the damned Or The Doors Performance Video filmed after all the band members were dead and Jim Morrison was a Medusa head with eels and snakes slithering from his eyes and mouth and ears Those were the worst days Days of burning guitars and blood sacrifices

16—

Last Man Standing

A Strange Moment If I wasn’t kneeling in a puddle of spilled beer, broken glass and cigarette butts My white shirt torn down the front where my tie would have been if I hadn’t ditched it, along with my glasses, once stuff started going over And bodies started flying I might have wondered whose blood it was on the right sleeve of my shirt or just what I thought I was doing an over 40, out of shape, college educated, bartender that early in the morning wrestling with young, alcohol and drug fueled students/ nominal adults Except I knew exactly what I was doing: I was trying to stop a bar fight from getting totally out of control It was the why part of the unasked question that was troubling to me later on It always amazes me how fast a crowded bar will get like totally silent once punches start getting thrown And the help kills the juke box and there is nothing audible but a chorus of fuck yous from the combatants, the sound of breaking furniture and glass and the distant wail of sirens drawing nearer to the scene No one speaks except bartenders and bouncers yelling instructions Pointing out hot spots still not under control And with lots of help, by the time the cops arrive, most of the serious shit has been taken outside where it is getting handcuffed or worse for not heeding the warnings of cease and desist by the heavily armed officers of the law

—17

alan Catlin

What happens not heeding those calls always seemed to me to be selfinflicted and not worth a second thought And I’ve never seen anything yet to change my mind The lead cop is a smartass I’ve known like forever and is like one of the funniest human beings alive when he’s not on duty On duty his sense of humor tends toward the sick side but I’m not in any position to question what he does to indulge himself in that vein I offered him whatever it was I was pouring myself to calm my nerves which he thought twice about before turning it down The end of the school year is a busy night with four years of old scores being settled in one huge sayonara Albany gesture often leading to court appearances and unexpected prolonged stays afterwards courtesy of the city The cops says, “Getting a bit long in the tooth for this kind of aftermidnight action, ain’t you?”

“At least, I’ve got all my teeth which is more than you can say.”

“Not for long if you keep this shit up.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Of you? Right. You’re just trying to relive your youth. I know what you’re thinking, ‘You’re never too old for a good bar fight.’”

He said that with a smile on his face but neither one of us was laughing.

Maybe because we were the same age He retired years before I even thought about it And he got a generous pension too I’ll be lucky if I get a free beer Just goes to show you how overrated what they teach you in college is

18—

Last Man Standing

Party Girl Before the drinking age change, we used to get the same sick crew for a full four years.

Some of them would turn into penny ante indie film makers crossing over the cusp into Big Time star but nothing would change the fact that he flunked out, that he was a dick then and he’s still a dick now.

The ones that made it all the way to graduation made you wonder: how the hell did they do it?

When did they study? And what did they use for money?

When I was in college, generally speaking, I was out of serious drinking money by the end of the second week of classes, if not sooner, which was just as well: English majors have to read in order to survive and reading takes time, time you wouldn’t have with a raging hangover or still half in the bag. Being stoned was a viable alternative but that would come later.

—19

alan Catlin

Weekends didn’t count, of course.

Hell, there was nothing else to do in Utica, N.Y. in the winters of the late 60’s but drink your face off. My guess is there still isn’t anything else to do there, which is one of the major reasons I moved somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

My first four year party girl was a stunning brunette with perfect skin, a great body and a smile to break your heart though she only used it on the bartender to get better service when she needed a drink, roughly 15 times a night.

I wasn’t fooled by what that smile was for but I pretended I was; she was that good looking and the smile that amazing. What the hell, if it made her feel better......I know it made me feel better.

Even now, some 23 years later, I can see her in the glare of lights at four thirty A.M., the bartenders calling out, “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. Yaddi, Yaddi, that means everybody.....” Her squinting, whispering “asshole” as she rises from the table with her young man for the night, half-blind, eyes puffy, motor skills gone and I know what she’ll look like now if she’s still alive.

20—

Last Man Standing

“The only way to die is when you’re fucking” When I first heard that Nelson Rockefeller died in the saddle screwing his personal secretary I thought it was so much nasty gossip I met an old lady at a bus stop who kept bumming cigarettes from me as we waited what seemed like forever for the #10 She said her son was what we would call an EMT now Saw Nelson’s body on the scene And that they, he and his co-workers, used to sneak women out of the Governor’s mansion all the time I didn’t believe a word she said Was convinced this death by fucking business was all so much crap But all the old timers on the banquet circuit I was working then swore it was true That Nelson was a whoremeister One guy swore up and down he used to do private parties for the Governor and was sworn to never talk about what he saw go down at those parties The only reason he was talking now was that Nelson was dead The woman he died on was named Meghan The same guy who told me about the parties said he sister almost had one go on her Literally He had a heart attack in the act but he recovered She wouldn’t sleep with him again Not for love nor money One near-death experience like that in a lifetime was enough for her

—21

alan Catlin

The pretty blonde I trained way back in the nightclub years got treated to a dead guy her first night on the job She told me later that she started out freaked when she came into work and ended up trying to keep me from freaking I had to admit I hated to have people die at my feet and that it was a bad habit I was having a tough time shaking Of all the ones I’d seen his was the one that got me most He was the youngest by far 36 Man! A couple of more cocktails and she told me ever since that night she had a thing for me I was so dense I simply had no idea She said she was afraid for her job now that I’d quit and moved on She wouldn’t sleep with the boss ‘cause she didn’t want no fat old man breathing and wheezing and who knew what all over her Especially when she’d rather be sleeping with me That was over 30 years ago now I wonder if she’s still pretty If she still wants me

22—

Last Man Standing

At the party They were handing out pills and stuff like candy I only did the downers once Reds I think they were We’d been drinking and the two didn’t mix real well Not when you didn’t need any help getting depressed So someone said you need to crank it up all the way Needed to start flying high baby high So I popped a couple of white crosses with some beers And pretty soon I felt almost normal in a drastic kind of knee jiggling, hyper, drooling kind of way Even messed up as I was I knew my pointless jabbering was bringing everyone down But I couldn’t help myself I was possessed Depressed And speeding my tits off The only antidote was more beers and some shots Anything that would shut my trap Must have worked I woke up face down on someone’s wash and wear pile Rug burns on my face It was going to be a pisser explaining how I got those burns someone said And it was

—23

alan Catlin

Transformation and Disfiguration It was like a war zone on the street I’d worked for over 20 years and never lost a kid to serious injury once Did the ER tour myself a few times to the point where I was almost a familiar face Plastic surgery in other cities doesn’t count All in all I had made out better than most Managed to block most of the kicks the last time that were meant to maim my face Just as I had when the six foot ten guy tried to blend me into the blacktop outside the first bar I worked Good thing for me he was as stupid as he was big The first one of my guys that got it was taken out by a vicious kick to the groin He was lucky they didn’t have to take both of his nuts when they did the operation The kid that did it was underage and was avenging his being turned away at the door His father had taught him the knee trick His father was a New York City cop

24—

Last Man Standing

The second guy got sucker punched the same night Would have gone a lot worse for him but for the fact that he took the hit right next to a crowd of his frat brothers who took the assault personally Neither of those guys lives who were involved in that little deal will ever be the same Two guys on staff got cornered in the back room up against a wall by six or seven bozos a few nights later intent on mayhem and maybe murder and they might have pulled it off had I not been locking up the cash, has been coming up from the cellar when the hassle began I had the cops there in record time with night sticks drawn It all happened so fast for that gang of losers never knew what hit them until they woke up in the back of a Black Maria, hands cuffed to the floor looking up at out-of-uniform cops with leather straps wrapped around their knuckles and rubber truncheons they knew how to use But hadn’t had the chance for months Months of tension just waiting to be released

—25

alan Catlin

The Cure “build then the ship of Death for you must take the longest journey to oblivion.”

—D.H. Lawrence Hemingway called it, “The slow death.”

Drinking until you could no longer drink Until your body fails Your mind Your heart Waking up as if gut shot Your body frozen in a rictus of total pain All that poison stuck inside you and now way out Some convulsing as you withdraw Heart attack Stroke Lips blue Fingernails and toes too I went most of the way there and I said I’d never go back But I lied Lied to everyone Most of all myself The only cure is to stop Or to die trying Hemingway went to the gun rack Took the cure the hard way

26—

Last Man Standing

Tropic of Cancer, Albany, N.Y. He said he wanted to be just like Henry Miller Chuck it all and move to Paris Leave a woman with big jugs like June behind who’d wait for him even if he didn’t deserve it And believe me, he didn’t Better yet, she’d come for him when he was out of cash and despairing that he couldn’t go on Maybe she’d even fuck his girlfriend the way June did Live the life of a Tropic of Cancer Though hopefully, he’d have an easier time publishing the book and selling the movie rights Maybe make a pile before he was like 90 years old and too far gone to appreciate it I wanted to lean over the bar, lift him up by the chin and say, “But, then, it wouldn’t be Tropic of Cancer, would it?”

There was no need for me to act out He didn’t have anything to chuck His wife was a frigid and dumb as a post and as broke as he was He didn’t know Anaïs Nin from a hole and the wall and even if he did, she wouldn’t have given him a second look even after she was in her 60’s and a little hard up Still, he persisted Insisted he was going to write it all down Whatever It was But we both knew he was dreaming He couldn’t even sign his name to the bar tab he would never be able to pay

—27

alan Catlin

Weekend Warriors Urban legend has it that every year during Bike Week in Florida, the bikers trash some jap wheels, fire it up with gasoline and hang the carcass like a badly cooked side of beef from a tree I’ve been down there a few times that time of year Seen a few sights but never that particular rite of passage Mostly what I’ve see are some weekend Road Warriors trying to pass as the real Thing Strolling the grounds of some Roadside Attraction Combination Crafts Fair and Flea Market getting into a real Florida frame of mind Which is, “If a field ain’t occupied throw up a tent, fill it with junk and call it a flea market and they will come” And sure as shit, they do The weekenders are easy to spot, walking around in wrinkled leathers that have never so much as seen an unpaved dirt bike track much less tasted concrete He’s probably a bond trader on a weekend excursion with the mistress along for ritual exchange of bodily fluids and for help pressing on the temporary tattoos They’re so obvious everyone has to struggle to keep a straight face whenever they’re around Which the hard core mostly do, for the potential entertainment value of having the phonies around And the odd chance the dude might be talked into hanging out at one of their hideaways One that has posted outside: Bikers Welcome All Weapons Must Be Checked At the Door: that is guns, knives, chains, brass knuckles-------

28—

Last Man Standing

The list is so long, half the potential customers would practically be naked before they got inside if they could read The phony slicker might be dumb but they aren’t stupid enough to actually go inside a place like that Hell, they’d been warned enough times about shit like that when they were kids they have an instinctual fear but somehow a few do and are never seen again It’s probably their bikes that get burned every year On our block the bikers all have crotch rockets that do zero to eighty in the time it takes to get from Becker Street to the bottom of the Furman Street hill, about four seconds or sixteen houses, depending upon how you count it They’re passing by leaves a brief after image A blur in our heads where the blind spot on the hill is Where all the cars double park and do dope deals Just passing the time of day While we wait And listen for the crash

—29

Alan Catlin’s poetry narrates stories from the lost and damned, provides a tour of everyday underworlds after dark, introduces the reader to the damaged and dysfunctional.

These take-no-hostages poems reveal the hard side of life, reveal the human animal at his or her worst.

—Jennifer Lagier, poet, Where We Grew Up “If you were out the night before and you were to wake up, hung over and hurting, you sure don’t want to be looking at this guy, or to pick up his book and start reading while waiting until the hair of the dog hits home.

Catlin is way too real first thing in the afternoon.”

—Dan K avanagh, novelist

“Catlin has been with us since the 70s: spinning tales, writing poems and making killer drinks. He’s the real deal, my friend, a heavy hitter with a pitch perfect voice and a solid knockout punch.”

—Jerry Boyd, novelist

“Ever have one of those crazy dreams so real you are afraid that you’ll never wake up and life will be like this every day if you don’t? And then you wake up and realize it wasn’t a dream. Catlin’s poems are like that.“ —Emile Ajar, author of Pseudo

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