Alan Catlin has several new books in the works including a long series of noir movie poems concluding with three chapbooks in one book under the title Exterminating Angels from Kelsay for mid-year 2022. he also has two chapbooks coming soon as well: Satan’s Kiss from Gutter Snob ad Dream Rider from Orchard Street Press.

A Sixties Romance:

                                    with words from Charles Bukowski

The weekends that began earlier each week
                   and ended later;
             the new and the old, turning on,
                   dropping out, going more than a
                   little crazy;
             the war that never seemed to end and our
                   friends who went to fight and
                   never came back;
             their letters in a shoebox with the rolling
                   papers and the love beads, black arm
                   bands with peace signs, draft notices
                   to appear;
             risk taking on the highways, everyone behind
                   the wheel A Rebel Without a Cause,
                   a Wild One with no sense of direction,
                   a MASH unit in a snow bank, dead
                   of winter, blood rock and frostbite;
             shooting pool in some redneck bar on the edge
                   of Deliverance not afraid to die;
             stoned crazy to acid rock, 8 miles high and falling
                   fast, writing it all down and forgetting
                   how to read;
             The White Album and the Number 9;
             Our Lady of Gone Tomorrows, a barefoot nun
                   with a tambourine and a jug of California
                   white, collecting quarters to buy a map back
                   home, to find the key to the Lost Silver Mines
                   of nowhere;
             Helter Skelter and the zombie chicks from Hell;
             A bad trip, a bummer, run, run the Homecoming
                   Queen's got a gun;
             Pistol Pete and the tail gunner geek killing machine
                   living next door, out of uniform but not out 
                   of the jungle and he doesn't know what to do;
             it was a romantic grand game, a magical mystery
		tour full of discovery as Bukowski 
		would say.

“rock and rollers with one foot in the grave”

long haired hippies in bell bottoms
playing the wrong redneck roadhouse,
booked into perdition out of cynicism
or ignorance, their repertoire acid rock 
and protest folk: Buffalo Springfield 
rounded off with The Animals,
“We gotta get out of this place,
if it’s is the last thing we ever do…”
not referring to Vietnam where it was
the unofficial anthem of the on-the-ground
grunt but to the here and now gig when
the plug was pulled on their amps, light
show disconnected, electric guitars useless 
for music but of some practical value
as weapons once stuff started getting broken,
pool balls turned into missiles; cues made into
cudgels and spears, long necks deadly weapons
for hand-to-hand combat, bar sappers dressed
in torn denim, vests and motorcycle boots,
faces flushed from a lifetime of serious drinking
in holes in the wall more dangerous and darker 
than this one, where even John Law would be
reluctant to go once shit turned ugly, bartenders
down for the count with head wounds or worse,
waitresses way beyond screaming, not that
anyone could hear a thing above the firefight
on the floor, the shuffling madness, a crowd
totally out of control.

Visions of Johanna

I don't remember the first time
I saw her

Not exactly
The last few years of the 60's are one long,
stoned, alcoholic blur of darkened bars,
concert venues, frat houses subterranean 
homesick blues

"Sunshine of Your Love"
the song of doomed youth I most recall,
her saying, "You look like Donovan.
Before he sold his soul to a record label."

But what I was had more to do, had more 
in common with being an exploding ticket
holder on a drunken boat to nowhere
drinking because I was depressed,
the more I drank the more depressed I was,
than actually selling my soul

I was thinking she was some kind
of acid angel who could rescue me from hell
on an endless weekend afternoon of substance
abuse and self-pitying gestures that made me
feel as pathetic as I was

Could see her pied beauty face across a dance floor,
barroom, streaked by strobe lights and day glo paints,
coming colors in my mind and I thought 
I could reach out and touch her but when I went to
touch, she wasn't there

She wasn't anywhere, was lost in some electric lady land
dream of the 60's, a stolen muse, a siren song; 
sometimes I wonder if she was real