Dennis Mahagin

Pantoum No More Tears

Hardly young,
and verging on redundant,
my feet going numb, but
I say my lines on cue.

Verging on redundant,
bald, and lathered with shampoo,
delivering my storied lines on cue:
' Lye soap runs right off the tongue...'

Quite bald, lathered with shampoo,
verging on old, bath water's cold,
lye soap runs right off the tongue,
but I come to say my lines for you.

Converging on old, bathwater cold,
squeak and slurp of a drain run dry,
I say: 'My lie, my line’s on cue…'
Confused by hypo allergenic shampoo.

The suck of unction! A drain run dry!
Lye soap hurts, when it hits the eyes.
Confused by bio degradable shampoos,
but I continue to say my lines on cue.

Soap hurts, when it hits the eyes,
going numb, hardly on cue, 
I come to lay my lines on the young:
' Time—running off... wish I were you.’

Dogging The Jogger

Didn't I tell you 
already 

not to come trotting 
'round my plot of grass 
no more? Sorry human 
you pin pack 

my weary ears, you burn me out, seven 
0Ato one of your sorry ass years, stinking 
a bit like Laundromat coin slits injected 
with WD-40, and you'd turn 

on a brother, on a dime 
first chance you got, 
wouldn't you?--opportunistic 
as one of those god damned  

c a t s, 

oh, now you got my dander up, 
didn't I tell you already I'm born 
ready, take a chunk of your pale hide 
from knee high to a pup, and just what 
do you think you're running from, son? 
Malaise don't go away with a couple 
paltry salty endorphins, you better 
pick up the pace, mister, faster, 
faster! Pull that rocket-shaped 
pooper scooper from the one 
good pocket the good Lord 
gave you, start giving back!

Consummate 
loser with Blue Tooth, Snap-On 
hatpin stirring the brain matter like 
pancake batter, old lady's turned 
a cold shoulder, upside down 
in the doghouse 
and sucking hind tit? So how 
does it feel? C'mon get 
real, come with it, 
confide in old Fido, 
one time! 

And another thing: 

I'd use your left polyester shin 
as a fire hydrant, (movable feast) 
but I'd really rather pee down 
my hind leg, tell you it's 
raining testicles, it's raining 
testicles, colorful seminal 
vesicles like swooning 
used car lot balloons. 

Just remember: 

Lassie pulled all 
her tricks 
for the cash
only, just like any 
garden variety20Celebrity 
Voice Over 
Whore, listen, as long as you're 
dashing down 
to the Minute store, 
why not pick me up a Chew Toy? Christ, 
so many bones to pick, boy, I've lost count, 
Milquetoast, Cheeky Monkey! You reek 
to high Heaven.   Man's best? 

Yeah. 

When pigs fly, 
sonny, that's right, fly 
now, fly away 
home.

Half-Hearted Affirmation Number 43

I wear my heart like an arterial spurt 
on muscle shirt where a phantom sleeve 
ought be. I’m thick 
with parenthetical ambitions, upshot 
of blood clot in the pericardium,
and when my ship 

comes in, I'm on a getaway hovercraft 
making mockeries of your mountain, 
a hummingbird slathered in sweet 
n' sour, with peppery dash of 
beta blocker, shaking it 
off, shaking 
it off, a moth 
inured to both lantern 
and lighthouse.
 
Oh, bad EKG, your peaks 
and valleys make vacillation a turnkey 
mantra, can't you see 
this is my half-hearted forty something 
affirmation?

—it may or not be 

working, it beats the [obscenity-deleted] 
out of me.

The Muzak Players, Behind Their Soundproof Pane, Knock Out Another Jefferson Airplane Session

The Muzak Players were packing up 
their immaculate axes. 
Drummer swore, 
assembling his Zildjian stacks, while 

lone female stone fox with frizzy brown locks 

and white-hot lint-spark on her lips, she pulled the 

spit plug on her alto sax, giving the eye to 
 

Faraway Guy on Fender Rhodes with 

Yanni flute patch on the motherboard. 
 

This hunky greenhorn 

ivory-ticklin fella he still felt 

pretty swell about his steady 

studio niche, visualizing 
 

all the savage breasts his riffs would suppress the 
sighs and smiles in supermarket aisles, on crowded 

elevators, high tech kiosks where Average White 

Joes waited on the bus the studs and muffins 

at Toys R Us!...

Meanwhile, fat cat with goatee and 

Fender Strat he scowled--spitting his pick 

into a sweat-soaked hand towel:

"Freaking Bitch Day from Hell!"

"Yeah but, Huey, you played so well!"

"Man, you 

don't understand. I could have

been a Shredder, there was a time, baby, I had 

my total tonal thing so together!"

"Hey now, there ain't no 

shame in copping the licks of 

Gracie Slick. We're doing her posterity a true favor."

"I suppose we did make the most of

"Find Somebody To Love."

"Are you kidding? We nailed that piece! Tight 
as the seal on some Tupperware, mon frere."

"Yeah. But what about heart, and soul? 
I mean, who we gonna sample next? Dave Grohl?"

Guitar Man leered at Sax Ma'am.

"I'll bet Grace Slick is a growler," he 
said, "in bed, I mean."

Drummer nodded at the words, and quickly 
concurred:

"Hand cuffs, joy buzzers and conductors" 

wands. Then later it's all about soothing 

Aloe Vera and palm fronds!"

Sweet Sax Lady had 

heard enough, and shortly 
made her play. She would 

find out, by God, if Piano 

Man was gay. 

"Hey," she 

said to him, "what would you think 
about getting a drink?"

"Ummm, yeah okay We'll hit 
Trader Vics, and who knows?--playing 
kissy face in that place, we might even 

get to hear some of our very own licks!"

Sax Girl smiled.

She was gonna have some fun
with this one

for awhile.

Portrait Of The Poet Beldarâ In His Pink Period

In France they put me on a 

pedestal to peddle Evian and 

U.N. lapel pins  

in long-winded iambic quatrains,

with lip-sync and 
toe-tap to match hot-ass 
refrain of D. Bowie's 
Fame,

then further
down the road a bit, at Ellis Island they
quit their pathetic myths of assimilation

and sucked off my 
soggy Widow's Peak with a 
cherry-red Dyson Shop Vac,

then slathered me 
with SPF-400 sunscreen
until I looked pristine 
as Edgar Winter with 

tungsten-silver spray paint balls 
all rolled back in my oblong skull.

My oeuvre is strictly 
Existential sequins of fresh-squeezed
eyeball amoeba spores pepper-sprayed
and staked to the barbie pit with 
acupuncture hatpins-- my palette 

an empty egg carton stippled and 
strangled by plastic six pack can straps, 
like rubber-banded 'Roids,

my most profound thoughts
pour forth as blood-streaked Alka 
Seltzer foam from squealing
seagull beaks when I show up,

uninvited 

to the Freak Raves 
on the Upper East Side and 

begin christening the World 

Beat pinata pony rides with

old school radio antennas 
snapped from stolen Impala 

work car as genuine 

knight-dubber scimitars!

And though it's entirely too 
true that on weekdays when I skip my 
afternoon shave, my pallor is more
than a little rough,

I've still got enough empathy in my 
long translucent ET pinky finger to 
route you a brand new clavicle-cum-

sternum mortar and pestle 
wishbones to pound blue-green 
granules of bile, adrenaline, 
heartache and halitosis 

straight into the snake-shaped 
scoliosis of your spine, I so 

relate, Big Time,
and in fact it is my

fondest wish
that I attend your 
Alfred E. Neuman-looking
Nephew's impending 

Crawford Cricket match, in third 
base box I'll smooth down his ungodly 
unruly snatch of cowlick smirk

with fistfuls of my 
trusty egg-yolk drool-- 

larvae in the 
fool's largesse,

I'll take ruffian to 
school, explain how we play the 
game back in France.

Layla Drives A Crash Cart

On the cable access

TV screen, Doc Holiday 

in bile-green army fatigues 

paces the lecture dais 
 

with hands clasped primly 

behind his ramrod back: 
 

"I can't comment on the avian 

pathogenesis," he barks into the press 

corps mike, "Thanksgiving being right 

around the corner, but I will say that 

Evolution has always been merely a 

creative theory, and Agent Orange can 

be roundly rubbed out using DMSO, 

Interferon and a remarkable household 

product called Shout !" 
 

I mute the sound, 

take a walk around 

the foyer with that 

insipid chopsticks 

jingle from one-

eight hundred 

ambulance lawyer

locked in my head. 
 

In '94 they nicked 

my cousin's spinal cord, 


trying to leverage a slipped 

disc into its proper cervical 

shelf-- round peg in a 

square hole, and every 

jiggy bone spur in its place. 
 

I remember 

standing by the bed, the look 

on his face as he came out of 

the ether--the way he kept
 

shaking his head in detached dissent 

as a pair of flies landed on his paralyzed 

groin where all their IVs went. 


Then the panic, 

slowly forming in his eyes--

sudden nerve spasms that made 

the metal headboard shake, 

candy-striped water straw 

spilling out ice chips 

and phlegm-laced spit 
 

all over his 

chapped, pursed lips. 
 

I began 

composing the lies 

I would feed him 

with no 
 

compunction, even
 

before the fat Navajo nurse 

waddled in, whistling the

Clapton song that goes on and 

on and on at the very end 
 

with his grandiose grand 

piano part that never did 

fit, no matter the dressing 

Eric tried to put on it.

Copywrite 2006-2009 Dennis Mahagin

Send us your comments on this article