ARMY STRONG by Dennis Doph

beyond beyond . 58

Above the bus seat above my head and to the left
The US ARMY has a recruiting pitch of calculated heft
US ARMY (ARMY STRONG) it sez:
then they dive into the trough
With a money laden pitch to jerk you poor dumb kids off

There's a $71K college fund for those of you who
can actually read
Another $40 K enlistment bonus for those of you
who are in dire need
All you patriotic redneck boys and physical education slags
Can count upon being airlifted to Afghanistan
and shipped outta there in body bags

Or you will be cannon fodder for two hot wars
Bush & Co are planning in Iran
Our ever ready CIA is revving up the ante
so they can rise up all Baluchistan
For you geographically-challenged high school kids
Batman, Ironman and Spider-Man nerds
The CIA is planning another red hot war
to rise up all the Iranian Kurds

So three cheers for Captain Spaulding
the US ARMY recruiter
With overwhelming riffs of Groucho Marx
who never would have been this kind of shooter
Make sure to email Patrick.Spaulding@usarec.army.mil
to let him know on no uncertain terms
how this latest Army pitch gives you a thrill
And if you're still infused with McCain-driven testosterone
and hate like any normal kipper
Use earplugs for the first round of mortar fire
...you won't need 'em for the last ZIP of that zipper

the THELMA & LOUISE MOMENT by D.Doph

beyond beyond . 57

It's finally come
The Thelma & Louise Moment Yeah finally
After 31 years of living in LA Loathing it
He & I looked into each other's so-alike
Pale blue eyes and said
Let's get the fuck outta here

We're moving to Santa Barbara
Small city with history and quiet and real culture
and quiet People with manners and quiet
A conspicuous lack of young adults on skateboards
Wearing all black Mouthing Awesome
as a response to everything
No teenagers on every corner
Cellphoning teenagers on the next corner
No crippling gridlock traffic in a traffic grid
Where one out of every five cars is stolen

Los Angeles is a city suffering from gigantism
Mentally it is still in Kindergarten Allowing
Atrocious billboards 200 feet high On unaffordable
Condo buildings which may never be built
Disgusted by our gladhanding wife-abusing
Loose cannon of a mayor Amused as all hell
Now we're locked in a gas crisis
Jewish matrons who one year ago
Gleefully cellphoned from behind the wheels
of their gas guzzling SUVs Now rush about
Like fish out of water in the trackless underground
of the Red Line and the Purple Line
Frightened
To be faced for the first time in their privileged lives
with People of Color other than maids

I work with the core voter registration team
of the Democratic Party Out on the fringes
of the Gold Line in Pasadena Registering
People to vote who've never voted before
Registering Republicans who knelt at the feet
of Rough Rider Ronnie
As Democrats Registering fifteen hundred people
In one day between Sierra Madre Villa
and Chinatown Always looking around

Looking around saying to myself
This is the last time I will be doing this

The last time I'll have to hear sports wonks
At that very good Szechwan restaurant in Chinatown
Getting their rocks off about some non-event at Dodger Stadium

The last time I'll have to listen to some hawk-faced
Former Soviet grandmother hang up the payment line
at Smart & Final over the issue of payment in pennies

The last time I'll have to watch fat-bellied Nebraska moms
at Motel Six mingle with blue haired junkies Walk helplessly
into the street Wondering why the big black dominatrix
Across the street is carrying a whip

The last time I'll hold my breath going into the john at Canter's
Because the night crowd has smeared the walls with feces

The last time I'll hear braindead young women
in their twenties beating each other up in the street
at 4:30 AM Beating the shit out of each other
In the middle of Franklin while traffic Same unending traffic
Surges on about them

The last time I'll see a huge reproduction of Angelyne
taking up the sky above Hollywood Boulevard

The last time I'll see Hollywood Boulevard

Fleeing fleeing fleeing
This semi city with its semi culture To which I had
To be dragged kicking and screaming in the first place
Only because they were shoving forty large in my hungry face
All the fruitless years we tried to buy into
This crappy boob oriented music and film culture
All of our great actors paying lip service
to Significant Art
Doing voiceovers for stupid animal movies
All the pumped-up young gay men with college degrees
Rushing to see the stupid animal movies

Sick of it

We're approaching the Thelma & Louise Moment
We'll get into his Prius Drive silently to the old city
Way out there on the continental shelf
We'll luxuriate in the endless quiet And return
to Los Angeles only for Philharmonic dates
The occasional probing session of acupuncture
Just to keep our plunging tesosterone
Tweaked

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING by D. Doph

beyond beyond . 56

The Gift That Keeps On Giving is my inimitable wit
Couched in the hidden fury of sarcasm
Guaranteed to slay every dumbassed no-nuts Twit
And push the crackbrained clod into the Loser Chasm

The Gift That Keeps On Giving is my flair for romance
How many lucky men I can ask to be My Valentine
With Romance comes innumerable Ants in My Pants
All the pangs and stings of things which are inimitably Mine

That Damned Gift is wearing out its welcome
It's been dragged across too many dirty floors
My precious Gift has become a hell-home
Not fit to see the light of day in the unsparing out-of-doors

My Gift which keeps (wearily) on Giving is my perfervid brain
Always inventing new ways to stretch sexual awareness
What I have done (well) before I will do (well) again
Without an ounce of favor or, (occasionally) fairness

The Gift which keeps on (inexorably) Giving is that
big piece of meat in my jock
Gifted to me by my (equally inexorable) Prussian DNA
This Precious Gift makes it possible for me to fuck around the clock
Gasping panting bottoms have no chance
to ask me How I Got That Way

So
I will work that threadbare wit Do the Dance of Insufferable Romance
Milk that feckless brain till it feels no pain
Pack that Prussian meat into a pump
And if, my dear, you think This Package is way, way too Queer
I will simply ask you to take YOUR Package off to the nearest city dump

Because I'm Special; Really a Piece of Work
Because I'm the Kraut to whom few can hold a candle
The man who blows me off is really some kind of jerk
I'm hard to hold and equally hard to handle
My heart has been accused of being black;
Sometimes I mount a Sneak Attack
During all this stress I'm still damned glad I'm living
And while I feel the Winds of Time whistling up my well-used Crack
We can all appreciate my being
The Gift That Keeps On Giving!

FEAR ITSELF by Dennis Doph

beyond beyond . 55

Franklin Delano Roosevelt the hawk faced man
who served three terms as President of this
Beknighted country Three terms & then some
before he fell
By the Georgia wayside and Harry Truman took over
FDR said at the beginning of his first term
When half the banks in this country were in default
The Dust Bowl was raging in the Midwest
Territorials in the Philippines were openly revolting
His wife Eleanor was having lesbian sex with a woman
in the Army
FDR said: the only thing to fear is fear itself.

He was so right Good old FDR His words still
Ring true today What we need to hear when fearmongers
Stand outside our doors screaming their wares
We know there is so much more fear in store for us
All the rockribbed conservatives cringing
in fear of what they know
Will change their comfortable lives forever
The entire Solid South cringing at the thought
Of an intelligent man whose skin just happens
to be a pale coffee color
Whose mother was white as white could be
Being President of this ever beknighted country
They want to cling to the bull necked old Navy guy
who looks like
He's about to explode any minute And does explode
with regularity on the floor of the Senate

We are in fear of our own children whose savage rites
We don't understand Even the reason for them to exist
The rites not the children In fear of our parents
going down
To impoverished death In fear of the doctors
Who scrape our wallets dry Even at the spectre
of the common cold Soccer Mom whose trusty Range Rover
took her handily
From playschool to playing field finds herself shelling out
Four hundred bucks a month to transport those little suckers
Fear takes hold of her Right where the Tampax should be
while she's standing at the gas pump

Still the Old Tigers whose approval soared to 80 + percent
After 9/11 They all blew so hard most of us believed them
(but not this cat) -- still the Old Tigers show no sign
of changing their tactics Ignoring global warming
Ignoring demands for living green
Ignoring the screams as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae crash
Now we understand with horror they're using the good ol' CIA
Our all-purpose agent of terror and subversion
To create new nationalistic wars on the outer fringes
of Kurdistan and Baluchistan
Yeah those outer fringes touching Iran

Iran will be fighting a red hot war on two fronts
Funded and sustained by our tax dollars For those of you
Who are taxed And Oh Our Advisers Blackhawk
Halliburton will be right in there setting up shop
No matter
What a new Administration chooses to do or tries to do
We'll be in the soup all over the Middle East
None of our Superheroes will be able to save us
Iron Man will just turn a deaf ear
And do another line Hancock will lie back in his sweats
Grab some more of Charlize Theron The Hulk will revert
To being Ed Norton for good and go back to his bad old ways
at the Fight Club
Christian Bale will forget where he put his flying suit
None of them Not one of them will be able to make us forget
our fear

While all of this is going on more and more of us queers
Will get married and raise cats The anally retentive guys
at Focus on the Family will have conniption fits
Try to take it all away from us
It will be too late All of the old reasons for our fears
Have drifted past their sell-by dates All of us old
Unreconstructed Liberals will have brand new fears

Like
How to behave when David Petraeus is acclaimed
Emperor of the Western World
And civil liberties in this country (this beknighted republic)
are shut down forever

FACE SHOTS by Dennis Doph

beyond beyond . 54

Adventuring from site to site
from dyspeptic day to fractured night
I encounter penises of every size
from all kinds of horny priapic guys
I'm invited to inspect backsides of fleece
from the Gulf of Guinea to the Isles of Greece
and to put my face into every tush
of descriptions rivalling Hieronymos Bosch
But what really floats my boat for me
Is the handsome visage which I might see
Accompanying the pricks and tushes and balls
sending me over my private Niagara Falls
For the pricks and tushes and balls are drones
that do nothing for me without good cheekbones!

Oh handsome man You have the earnest art
to light the fire in this erratic heart
Give me the mighty nose of some Sephardic Saracen
I'll rush into his cave and feast upon his barer skin
Oh handsome stud my skin has lost its paleness
when I encounter your Mediterranean maleness
Accept my worship ; let's have no solemnities
And I'm content to discover your extremities!

So be prepared to put me to the test;
Dick shots are nice. But face shots are the best!