Member Poem

Inspiration on Rye

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to

accept the one that’s actually waiting for us.”

--Joseph Campbell.

Yeah, it’s two a.m. 

          in Sin City, as the twin moons of March

                         hiss like licorice lawn sprinklers--

          it’s all swamp gas & maple syrup sweetness

                         there in the cobblestone alley, where

the blasphemous bricks babble Beatles’ tunes

          from their Caucasianist album & the red-velvet

          cake dumpsters love to perform chest-bumps &

                                                     French-kisses, spilling

                                            their left-over pizza crusts &

                                       Chinese food that always tasted

                                 like Syrian kerosene when you

                                 touched them.

Bobalina’s Bistro-Club & Pub                     opens up just as

                                 everyone else is closing their 

                         joints down. The door marked 

                 THE DAMNED is illuminated with sticky

          sheets of firefly nipple-honey, slathered

on so thick that it sounds like a wet

          weasel tail to the casual touch.     It is 10’ wide & 3’ tall,

                                           just off the alley, where the back

                                           is the front, & easy to hear for all

                                           the hippest trolls, those churlish

                                           children of the night, appearing

still-born & anxious 

out of spinning shadows     that felt like warm ice-water when

                        someone passed through them,

                        where a hundred angry voices,

                        clenched like a cocaine fist, were

launched from three dozen pie-holes

baking up bombastic bacon-wrapped

ballads & herring-soaked hirsute hosannas

as smug hyenas in beaver top hats & cork

boots banged their long silver wallet chains

in the pious piss-puddles adjacent to the exit

where everyone entered.

I’ve heard through the juicy peach that the juke opened up in the

late 40’s, financed by Holocaust survivors, & rapidly became the

club of choice for a lot of the sad Beat Poets, who readily admit

that all their best poetics were first carved into the men’s

room stall doors with dull carrot stilettos, with many of their

wurst-words transcribed into hand-stitched burn marks on

the rough underbellies of laughing purple loaves of Russian

Rye, that still lurk crucified on bloody nails in the nameless

dark passage ways, unnoticed, unless some silly customer

wants to use a flashlight as a microphone, or lights up a fat

doobie with a WWII Zippo, always hearing that tell-tale click 

that tastes like a chocolate carbuncle drenched in lighter fluid.

Bukowski had furious fistfights in the alley. Burroughs had sex

with Siamese twin typewriters while munching on black meat

muffins. Ginsberg ran naked, howling in pain, sporting a two

foot red dildo that was inserted in his butt. Kerouac constantly

recited bad haiku, that always tasted of rancid saki, & never 

made any profit. Most of us young Turks hung out there all

night, every night, taking turns sitting in Picard’s swivel chair,

mumbling, “Make it so.”

Poets find their own

inspiration in the odd

corners of chaos.

glenn buttkus