‘By Peter Magliocco

The Heat of the Mad Dogs

Cripple me not, wild child, like a booted bag
Whirling through the spin cycle of time
Drying out the husk of me.
I saw you enough times come through
The Vegas airport in the late 90s – saw

Your inimitable acts I warily sidestepped,
Desiring (to tweak-paraphrase Thomas Hart Benton)
Your bubbly personality doomed for a fall.
The rags of yesterday somehow ennobled us then,
The fortune in our eyes worth more than gold

If you valued the soul’s creative wellsprings.
The witch-hunt of light inveigled us,
Took the radiance from within stealthy withdrawal,
Leaving us in dire straits & core wounded.
It happens to all young lovers I am told,

The fall from mutual graces, the bad
Revelations of each other’s shortcomings.
Oh, I know, it hardly matters in the sphere
Of earthly relations unfolding with plenitude
& diversity; nothing really registers except

That wildness is gone from both of us,
Now settling into the pit of middle age
With our lives on the back burner
Still sizzling, but robbed of their keen flavor
By the heat of the mad dogs about to devour us.

###

The Ineffable

Sin was born of the travail of ages
Perhaps, redolent as swine muck
Licked-up by Poe’s black cats.
The effigy of the nightmare is

Something we live with, a shudder
On the nocturnal landscape.
Taboo is its exotic adjunct I was told
By one of the specters who ruled

The land of my sleepwalking dreams;
Where nothing but false suns shine
In your solar-powered brainwaves
& the android wife bosses you about

After having her private parts retooled
By Microsoft & genetic rebooting.
The future is already yesterday, it pap smears
The fissured window of your being

Through which visions of the damned
Slowly materialize presenting things
You’ve never really seen before:
All that’s in heaven & hell galore,

The polymorphic perversities of savants
& servants alike revealing the ineffable
Facts of another lifetime yet to be lived
By your unspeakable cloned selves.

###

Only horror movie lovers who scream through the Babylon nights

they are born who plunder in the night’s mine
extorting blood from the nubile working class
there are few birds of paradise left
fluttering down the same table with
the sexually assaulting Hollywood producers
preying on young innocent actresses
with any below-the-belt proposals:

they scream through the Babylon nights,
all those abused by the fat corporate moguls
who become obscene with foul puissance,
everywhere the rank city air inveigles
itself from ritual criminal inhalations
overshadowing a landscape of winking
neon lights glittering like dead glowworms
slithering their way through S & M dens

oblivious sleepers & old queens die in
tasting their last lascivious rites of power
through the underworld’s noir passages
vamp-fiendishly come their close-up rites
of conquest, never easily navigated until dawn
when paranormal shadows surrender
their manifested & poltergeist sex acts
to the day’s effusion of solar rays
when you awaken, defiled or broken,

wanting to kill
the bloodsucking rapist
by your side

but grasping only
your own
nothingness

###

Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill!

Nevada hills pose under the sun
Like forgotten dinosaur bones
In their final resting places.
Eyeing them from a Chevy window
Displaying a speed-dial of scenery,
I toast Blue Diamond’s craggy sides
& advise my teen hustling driver
To ease her sandaled foot off the gas.

Please, before we rollover & join
The white crosses lining the highway?
My Diva’s lavishly ringed right hand
Leaves the gear shift knob to linger
Gently on the knob on my blue jeans,
Reminding me of a Sharon Stone flick-
Moment when she does something
Similar before crashing her sports car

Into a watery abyss of no-return.
Suddenly to have the arousal of ages
Becomes the ultimate fantasy car ad
On the play-per-view screening
Of our uncensored amateur porn shoot:
My Diva’s hand easily shifts my center
As she road-kills a dumb scurrying rabbit

With a resounding sonic-thudding.
Just as I prematurely sound the siren
Of my own heartbeat going off the charts
(Deeply into the closed road of dying desire),
Diva asks if I need the Rhino Pill again?!
“No, baby,” I somehow wink back, pained,
“Just my automated external defibrillator.”

Needless to say, we speak very little
To one another the remainder of the trip.
Then I inevitably fall asleep again to dream
I paid $399 for this Oculus sneak preview
Only the cirrus sky-watchers orbiting above
Could get a real kick from, considering how
I had a fatal heart attack before the real climax.

###

I’m Thinking of You Too

Do you picture moon-crowned valleys at dawn?
Or salient peaks untouched
Anywhere the horizon line is found
Balancing the morning sun
On a faraway ellipsis.
Where the embryo light shimmers
In bellies of scavenger whales
Adrift in some murky ocean
There life began a millennia ago,
On which silent elegies still flood
In homage to bio-crafts unknown.
I bask in that light now & then
When new tides of morning come
To gently impersonate Melville’s ghost.
I’m eating eggs and pancakes,
Thinking of you too as I ponder
Everything the light can bring us
In the daily epiphany of your music
& its guitar chords strumming now
With cinematic birds at play
In umber branches overlooking
The dancing glimmer of silver waves.

###

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where for several years he’s been active as small press writer, artist, and editor. He has recent poetry at online and print publications like Taj Mahal Review, Bluepepper, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. His latest poetry books are Go to the Pain Lovers (Duck Lake Books) and The Underground Movie Poems (Horror Sleaze Trash).