July 2022

Both ends burning-

Better get Abstract- In the midst of the Great Depression, Alan Squier, a failed British writer, now a disillusioned, penniless drifter, wanders into a roadside diner in the remote town of Black Mesa, Arizona, at the edge of the Petrified Forest. The diner is run by Jason Maple, his daughter Gabrielle, and Gramp, Jason’s father, who regales anyone who will listen with stories of his adventures in the Old West with such characters as Billy the Kid.

Alan, indifferent to the hostage situation, engages Duke in lively conversation and toasts him as “the last great apostle of rugged individualism. Then he produces a life insurance policy from his bag and amends it, making Gabrielle the beneficiary. Then he asks Duke to kill him (“It couldn’t make any difference to you, Duke … they can hang you only once …”), so that Gabrielle can use the insurance money to realize her dream of moving to France. Duke obliges, then leaves with his human shields. Alan dies in Gabrielle’s arms, secure in the knowledge that she, unlike the rest, will escape her dead-end existence to pursue her dreams.

The Residents inspired version-

I always thought that the July 4th Holiday brought out the Trailer Park in America

Codependency Day

July 4^th afternoon

The grill is on

And it’s been beer after beer after beer after beer.

Old dogs and their cheese burger bitches

Barbecue those oldies on the radio

While they lurch looking at the

Bottom of a bottle holiday

They regale some illusion of

Freedom, youth or lucidity

Your pick there

But the blue veins in stubby cut offs

Resound in male pattern baldness

Beer guts and semi-congenial

Bullies.

While in the kitchen

Fat broads blather gossip

And shoot dirty looks

In the direction toward the only

one of them there

who still has her figure

and a history.

They all secretly envy.

-Got Abstract ?  2014