Las Vegas - 1940s
A Series of Poems
Freemont St. where they tell howdy do.
Is the day it is hot and arid and crossed,
With a couple of pharmacies and a jewelry store.
But at night it is like being in neon Times Square,
With gambling on the side.
With Pocahontas watching your every move.
So effervescent so foaming and fizzling
From the silver coins make silver hands,
And the hush of hidden hubba shuba in the wings.
All the glamor with none gaudy the thoidy thoid.
Though tears will fill the skies
with a flash of salvation.
Floating as a mushroom cloud.
In thunder, lightning, or in rain
And the setting of the false sun,
Under which the white star rises
In the blue echo of thither sail,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
Quiescencing a data
Based pretentiousness of cruel and unjust act,
To poison the motto:
Work hard and prosper,
For the hope is to pile riches
Beneath the Hoover Dam
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In the exploitation
Of the word soaking meme in Stardust,
Soaked in Pioneer club soda extreme.
El Cortez would be proud of the melting
paradise foretold.
No snow covers this earth,
Even among the colonnade,
With a jetsam litterage of convolvuli
Ired in the visage.
What bright light sheens
Over scanscaramouche dark
And discants the overmogued delicacy.
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Unter der Linden upon the ghast salt way,
Looking once had a place
Which is not there but there.
Gold is in them there rooms
Upon which the casino is remade
For your pleasure dome of Xanadu.
Goodnight Saigon,
Though we have never been,
Except in nightmares yet to pass,
With the olive green from an other age.
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So upon the waste land,
A new vision of darkness comes:
Gaming is in the blood,
A throne encased in characters,
On the way to Fremont Street
In small Las Vegas,
Were the movie stars
Play catch and release.
With a couple of pharmacies and a jewelry store.
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