A Guided Tour of Hell

by Alan Catlin

"Sometimes hot sauce was the only

way I knew I was alive."

--Michael Connelly

Drunk on Stout and wee lads

of Irish whiskey: the Black

Bush, Tullamore, Power's,

Jamie and the boys, all the dead

soldiers of an armed conflict

with the unseen, boggy nights of

smoke, the landlord's face the last

sight I would see before the fall

and after, lying back down in

sawdust and ash, three quarters of

my way through a liquid guided tour

of hell, the blessed isle, a drink for

each county taken, until the weight

of it all dragged me down and I could

no longer separate the people from

the light that awaits me at the end

of this long, dark tunnel I'm sliding

toward the end of.

In the bottom of some hour

by Alan Catlin

after last call, nearly

snow blind in some field

on a stoned drunk mission

to head due north of nowhere,

alone and lost, skating ice,

the suicide oceans of night,

subzero windchill through

a forest of dead trees.

mounds of snow like headstones

in the Gravesend where no

man goes; staggering, close to

brain death, the body's folly,

walking on when there is no

place to go.

"how grimly we hold onto our misery"

by Alan Catlin

Whored out and drug sick,
bumming cigarettes from half-
dead sailors in cheap side
taverns, one foot in the grave
and the other about to slide,
sharing tokes with lung sick
losers, needles with a dying
breed, eyes and mouths like
a mad dog's in the morning,
a dead one at night, still standing
but about to fall, prayer flags
from lost tribes affixed to wrists,
body prepped for plain air burial
on baked tar barroom roof, junkyard
rate in shadows, waiting.

"So when death comes it can only take part of you"

by Alan Catlin

If business improves
maybe he can afford
better perks, something
cooler than a ten dollar
customized t-shirt that
says, SHORT BLADE
on the front side and
STREET TESTED
NEIGHBORHOOD APPROVED
on the back, a sort of team
jersey for the lowest level
drug dealers, advertisements
for the self, no beat cop could
miss when it came time for
rounding up all the usual suspects
bust, a perk not nearly as flash
as the orange pimpmobile
emblazoned with Playboy decals
the just-out-of-his-teens
rival boss was using as his ride,
weapons of mass percussion
speakers pounding out a bass beat,
rattling windows for miles around
wherever he went, daring the punks
to empty their nines in his direction
if they could work up the nerve.

She must be

an Isodora Duncan

wannabee

with consort

dumb show dancing

among white

wire brushed

weathered

headstones

They are listening

to inner show tunes

partners

skirting brink

of perception

on cemetery hill

above twin ponds

Do they

return that night

to fuck

on felled

grave markers

under

crescent

moon?

by Alan Catlin

The Dancer

was some kind

of spaced

speed queen

dressed in

black

diaphanous

veiled ankle

length skirt

wind billowed

black wraparound

eye shades

way black

dyed hair

blouse cape

& skirt

She pirouettes

on cliff edge

overlooking

glacial kettle

ponds in

Mt. Hope

Cemetery

choreographing

an artless dance

of death

by Alan Catlin

Some thought

by Alan Catlin

she rode harder
than a hot car,
four on the floor,
downshifted into
a tighter gear
than she was in,
hugging close to
soft shoulders,
spitting stones,
broken glass,
roadkill, the skin
& bones of steel
belted tires, over
inflated as she drives,
heading into blind
turns, the dead man's
curves of her body
claiming more than
one victim, white
crosses in a desert
of graveyards
marking the names
of the men
she once loved.

Asked why

he killed her,
left the body
amid all that
garbage dumped
by winos, freaks,
out of towners,
bums, to be found
by short cutting
kids on the way
home from school,
too hysterical
to describe exactly
what they saw,
what had been
lying there, unprotected
in all that heat
and shit. Veteran
cops would heave
their late lunches
after seeing what
he'd done to that
poor woman and
all the perp could
say was something
about a stabbing pain
in his head, co-
conspirator voices telling
him what to do,
the head guy dressed
like some kind of
Gabriel angel telling
him it was God's will,
or whatever. "Put some
of this shit down on
paper and have
him sign it. Maybe the
courts will think of it
as a confession."

by Alan Catlin

Waiting

by Alan Catlin

Waiting, in this city, in this
dream of stopped time, unchanged
habitations, places of business,
hard luck cafes since the turn of
a prior century until urban renewal
bulldozed everything down, imposed
highways, arterials, thoroughfares to
nowhere, everything altered except
the waiting, the whores and strip clubs,
the booze and the sweating faces
of the middle aged men and pretending-
to-be-men-boys, pounding on the bar,
the stage, dollar bills clutched on their
fists, their eyes clouded by alcohol
and weed as the Divine One sheds her
layers, exposing more than skin to these
men and boys soon-to-be-dead in undeclared
war, high speed car wrecks, drunken driving
escapades natural causes, unnatural causes,
still waiting, waiting for what comes next.

Cleaning

by Alan Catlin

When I was 17
we were basically homeless
My father said,
"Your mother and I are
going to be living in a motel,
what are you and your sister
doing?"

I got a job cleaning
rooms in a hotel, sleeping
in a janitor's closet
I could barely fit a
ratty old mattress in

After my sister
got out of detention
she got a job there too

We took turns working
and sleeping on that
ratty old mattress

I'm not proud
what happened to me
but you have to live

I'm still cleaning rooms
but mostly in rich
people's houses

It pays pretty good if
you know what you're doing
and you actually show up
regular when you're supposed to

Now my sister's dead,
47 years old and she
died in her sleep
of natural causes,
a drug overdose

That's a natural cause
in the world we came from

The Reprieve

by Alan Catlin

He comes in from the rain
end of Summer night
like something that had somehow
survived open air burial:
clothes torn, mud streaked,
long straggly hair covering
his face looking older than
the dirt he'd been lying on,
blue tainted lips cracked
and bleeding, white foam
caked at the corners, eyes
yellow hard boiled eggs
with brown rotting spots
dead center he is trying
to see through as he says,
"Is it too late for a beer?"
"It's always too late for you."
I reply, as the bar lights dim,
as the storm intensifies,
"I've got money."
"Your money's no good here."
"You don't understand..."
But I do understand,
every damn thing he
might have said.

asshole

by Alan Catlin

Thirty years of hard drinking
and all I have to show for it
is a beer belly so large
you could out a spigot in it
and draw some decent draught beer

a pay-by-the-week
transient hotel room
even the roaches wouldn't
stay overnight in

a dumpster load of glass
bottles and empty cans

torn clothes so stained and filthy
even the bums wouldn't pull
them from the trash on
the coldest night of the year

these open wounds where my
vital organs should be

Promethean love dogs from hell
feasting on my innards
my pale misbegotten flesh

I'm so shit out of luck these days
I expect these damned harpies will
want to fuck me in the eyes
before I die.

the doors of hell have numbers on them upside down

by Alan Catlin

in this life like a mexican border
town of the mind, halfway between
noir and surreality, deep dreaming
rainbow colored neon in thick polluted
haze, nothing concrete especially not
the buildings, the rolled up pavement,
these jails without bars, and the bars always
packed with hombres muy borracho,
brain dead but fathappy on a strict diet
of bloated worms found floating in bottles
of tequila azul their habits supported by
soulsisters, acolytes worshipping at the altar
of Our Lady of the Too Tight Miniskirt
with their blood brother pimps, peyote button
pushers, each entreaty from their rubio rouged
lips an executioner's song, satanic verses
for a candlelight processional of saints
and sinners; in this hour of dire need,
every day is the day after the last one.

Burning Amy

by Alan Catlin

No death from above
napalm run, no car
crash turned fireball,

no girl in the picture
carrying burning jelly
on her back,

but a working girl
in an argument
gone terribly wrong,

soaked with lighter
fluid and set on
fire,

"My husband is not a
monster," his wife would
say.

But what kind of man
is he? Burning Amy
on Backus St.;

something from a nightmare
that leads to Westchester Burn
Unit, relived nightly

something that could never
be forgotten, maybe not a
monster, maybe something else.

He was clueless in Gaza

sucking on the folds
of his cheeks, one
side at a time, back
and forth, running his
tongue over the spaces
where his teeth should
have been, working on
a moaning sound deep
inside that rose in
intensity until it looked
as if he might explode
from all the time bombs
that were about to go off
inside him.
He was so bled out
and wide eyes crazy
without vital life forces
he no longer had the energy
to defend himself against
the demons that had
taken over his life.
He looked in my direction,
blue eyes in a field of red,
shaking hands and dis-
colored lips. I'd seen
dead men with a better
chance of making it out
of whatever desert they
were in than his chances
were of getting out of
anywhere alive.

by Alan Catlin

Day of the Dead

by Alan Catlin

She could have been
anywhere between 26 &
dead of old age, cadging
Gin Rickeys from bar flies,
showing too much tit and
an icy sexual fire that almost
compensated for her washed
out eyes, pale coked out skin
and negative brain waves
that sucked in souls and
placed them in black holes
way beyond all the absolute
zeros of her mind.
"I ain't having no Welfare
baby, that's for sure, not this
babe." She says, scarfing
down pills with each new
ration of double Gin.
"What this babe needs
is a slim hipped dude
to some slow dancing with
and some hard loving after."
And if all else failed,
the next dude in the bar was
going to be the poppa of
her sure-to-be born-premature
child.

All those years

of solitary confinement
inside a Gilbey's Gin
bottle were crawling out
of her stammering lips
demanding a mercy drink
for a dying, lost soul.
She foresaw a bad journey
for me in my next
life if I didn't rescind
an absurd ultimatum
involving the withholding
of vital fluids for her
lips, poured out an endless
succession of invective
so vile, I was almost
impressed by the quantity
and sincerity of her angel
of death wrath. I suggested
a trip to the City Mission,
they specialized in lost
souls, although they frowned
on her holiest of waters.
"A good night sleep, a square
one or two and a hot shower
and you'll wake up refreshed as
a maiden."
"Don't bullshit me, I was
born drunk and violated
and I intend to die that way."
As if she had a choice,
I thought, handing her five
bucks on the sly, escorting
her to the door and pointing
to the Lamp Post bar just down
the block. "Do your worst."
I said, giving her a healthy
shove out onto the icy sidewalks
of hell.

by Alan Catlin

Burning in Hell

by Alan Catlin

Riverside fog and swamp gases
in the low lying marsh, bulrushes
and the thin brown reeds where
the smokers inhale blue clouds
and slow burning tips, glass pipes
and low moans from the jackal faced
stoners, petty tipsters and penny ante
johns stumbling in the dark, lighting
their Zippos now that the scarred,
bent necks of the pole lamps have been
shot out, are irreparable, the damage
done negligible in the lives of the terminally
lost, blundering their way down blacktopped
walkways leading to where the wrought
iron railings have been ripped away,
sold for salvage, twelve pieces of crack,
the weight of one soul on fire along
the muddy banks of this overflowing
river cutting through the heart of hell.


*email: thecatlins@msn.com

Like a Postman Ringing Twice

by Alan Catlin

she bought me Schenley's and ice,
love in strange places, furious sex,
desperate and wanton as if we were
partners in some crime story as yet
unwritten, James M. Cain characters
on the run from laws we hadn't broken,
our uncommitted crimes as unsavory as
our hearts and our minds addled with
all the cheap gin and late night movies
we watched, the black and white shadows
moving on stained walls in unlighted rooms
we shared on the edge of industrial strength
nightmares we couldn't stop dreaming
so gone on life's poisoned drinks
we thought the sun rose at night leaving
heat rashes on our skin cold showers and
lotions could not assuage all the empty
days and nights of the moonlight and mayhem
of our lives.