WHERE I SPIT by Dennis Doph

out there. 7

Let the Christers rise up and fruitlessly endeavor
To cover us all with glory. Let them flock
Let them all twist again like they did one far-away
last summer, go off half-cock,
Let them elbow us to show us how very clever
They are to celebrate whole-heartedly
their pal Sweet Leaping Jesus.
Let them wrap their rosaries around their waists
like g-strings to please us.
Let them poison our neighborhood with the strains
of T-Rex and the Doors unbound, in and out
of chains.
Let the old floppy-dippy-hippie matrons unbind
their fearsome hair,
Let their fat-gutted banty rooster husbands
grovel before their beldame fair,
Let their kith and kin rock 'n roll in a reverie
too dim to capture
Let their twisting and their turning present
a simalcrum of The Rapture,
Let them exhibit their ignorance without
a shred of human doubt,
And I will let my gobble-ins get them,
if they don't watch out.
For if they let off steam in my space,
even just a little bit,
This devil-educated Kraut will work up
one lethal gob of spit,
And if I spit, and when I spit, my spit
is cruel and clever,
For when I decide to release my demon spit,
Where I spit, no weed grows. Ever.

BLUE EYED BOY by Dennis Doph

beyond beyond . 68

When first I encountered the blue eyed boy
I was hardly more than an impressionable child
Something about this youngman
drove this youngman wild
He was more than a treasure; less than a toy
Not to be lumped (or lumpen) with the hoi polloi

Never never had I seen a man onscreen
Remotely approaching this paragon of beauty
Laboring opposite Virginia Mayo he did more than his duty
There was nothing soft about him; always smart.
always keen
The handsomest fucking Jewboy we'd ever seen

Gravitas; a chiseled face; the body from hell
Silver Chalice sank without a trace
But none of us could forget that face
Shortly, another epic rang the same bell
A Rocky Graziano biopic? Oh well

We were asked to agree: Somebody Up There Liked Him.
Some bodies Out There certainly did
We all flocked breathlessly to patronize this kid
This Theater Devil who addressed our every whim
...suddenly, we were all obsessed by him

We had to see him in color for the fix to take;
What tied the can to it was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
When we saw those ice-blue eyes every man Jack of us
went WOOF
YEAH. Brick Pollett was the role of roles
which released the brake
Suddenly our boy was impossible to shake

Nothing kept us from adoring him; now
we were free to gaze
Unhesitatingly upon that precious face
To worship that tight body was no mere disgrace
Because Paul Newman had become a craze
Releasing us from Brando and Clift and lazier days.

Voluptuous Liz Taylor he could push away
He could embody the lascivious thoughts of Tennessee
Diverging sharply from the used-to-be
Of Gable, Cooper, and embolden
Hairy thoughts of hairy-chested Bill Holden
Now we were all on our merry way
Cinema was in a different day

All of us who knew we were more
than just a wee bit different
In the straight Eisenhower society, chafing at the bit
In the basement of the Pollett mansion
a new match was lit
We were chomping something much chewier than chives
As blue-eyed Paul faced off against Burl Ives
for us, our boy was more than heaven-sent

Newman blasted his way into the Pantheon like a rocket.
Great roles fell to him like veritable plums
We agreed: something more than wicked this way comes
Then our blue-eyed clever Action Man
Returned to the Broadway stage and Gadge Kazan
Pausing to put another plum role in his pocket

Finally
we had the core of the Blue-eyed Boy;
Drooled over the adventures of Chance Wayne
Knowing no one might have courage to go there again
Bounding, rebounding to deflect his manly rage
Against the lacquered countenance of Miss Page
Re-filling her syringe so we might all enjoy

The hustler hubris of Tennessee's Sweet Bird
Then the conjunction we might all have anticipated
Came with a marriage to a gal we might have hated
We'd experienced Eve and her Three Faces
But Miss Joanne was one of our new graces
So: we whispered: Newman.
and, joined to that: Woodward.

For years they conjoined on item after item
We all came out to rally 'round the flag
And, with Lee Remick and Angela filling up the bag
No one could mope that we had seen a bummer
When Paul and Joanne took us on that Long Hot Summer.
They were so juicy we felt we could bite 'em.

Clift fell by the wayside; Brando wallowed into fat
For the Sixties Paul was Master of the Game
Knocking off Hud to maximize his fame
Going nose-to-nose with acting zeal
with always amazing Patricia Neal
And we agreed: this is where it's at.

Then there was Harper, Cool Hand Luke, and Butch
Cassidy to round out Paul's escutcheon
Surely there had been no kind of clutch on
This kind of actorly career;
Paul Newman was less than damned and more than dear
Throbbing, sobbing
we all released that clutch.

He and Bob Redford sailed, so together, off that cliff
We suspected The Worst; prayed for it, actually
That this kind of intensity could exist
between He and He
Then super-epics became the Seventies thing
Towering Inferno outpaced The Sting
As our boy tried out another acting riff

SUPERSTAR. But there was so much more
to him than that
As his career dissapated into chunks
Of meaty fare like Fort Apache, the Bronx
Absence of Malice yet another grail
and The Verdict convinced us Our Man could not fail
But saw (for the first time) rings of sweat around his hat

Is Paul Newman possibly getting old?

No one could suggest a course so dampling
As he progressed from Sally Field to Charlotte Rampling
Then, to generate the newest Newman's pet
He marketed his own brand of vinaigrette
Best served lukewarm; even better cold

Color of Money was the reward for all which
had gone before
And in a crazy kind of actor-attrition
He rounded it all off on the Road to Perdition
Sending Tom Hanks to his grave with that killer's smile
Knowing he could be this kind of bastard all the while
Never quite wholesome, but never, never
just another acting whore.

Last saw him on the Showtime special Iconoclasts
Leading Bob Redford through bosky dells
of Connecticut
We Newman-fanciers knew deep in our gut
Since we had spent fifty years worshipping this friend
All of us were afraid to write: THE END
Because Paul Newman is a pleasure which always lasts.

RUBBER DUCK by Dennis Doph

http://wagenblatz@aol.com

out there . 17

I sailed the High Seas in the sloop Film Noir
with Hedy Lamarr at my side
This Slovakian wench spoke nothing but French
with George Sanders as our trusty guide
We crested the waves of Insupportable Doubt
and our dangers you might have guessed
With my manly physique embellished by the beak
of a rubber duck on my chest.

Faith Domergue had me pressed from stress to stress
taking me Where Danger Lives
Maureen O'Hara made me a Secret Sharer
and taught me to throw poinards and shivs
Then Fairbanks Junior made me even loonier
while conspicuously much better dressed
But I didn't give a fuck with that rubber duck
quacking away on my chest.

Gloria Grahame gave me a rubdown
as we sailed toward Old Macao
And the lift of my sword as Jane Russell came on board
threatened to sink that scow
Miss Gloria did me from stem to stern
and Miss Russell did all the rest
Then I watched both of them frown as Jerome Cowan
did that rubber duck on my chest.

Thrills were never more so than Paul Henried's torso
with its burden of thick blond fur
And that Westphalian child (backed up by Cornel Wilde)
faced me off between Her and Her
Then John Carradine joined this juicy group
and my chances got less than slim
When Carradine and the girls put me through a few whirls
and faced me off between Him and Him.

Things got pretty dicey
as we breasted the Malacca Straits
And we felt kind of punk when we saw Barbara Stanwyck's junk
threatening all of our fates
But my brave Rubber Duck's heart went, thump, thump, thump
as we sailed into the dawn in the West
For all Stanwyck's ex-cons were brave Amazons
with rubber ducks on their chest!

BEYOND BEYOND (revised) by Dennis Doph

beyond beyond. 1

In these times of tumult and stress
Perverse delights stumbled upon and found
Even wilder stuff discovered in distress
I'm inagurating this new blog BEYOND BEYOND
Pushing into my seventh decade
Enough experience to sacrifice my soul
Pushing out at the head of this Pig Parade
Pushing my anal ring out of my hole
Pushing what little male beauty I have left
Beyond the contrapuntal moral shift
Beyond the pain of those who are bereft
Beyond the comfort of a Botox lift
Encourage Bear Men to lick the sperm from my red fur
Clean me like an old tomcat from positions heinous
Remembering my former flexibility (as it were)
Puckering my well regarded wide pink anus
Savoring the last ejaculation on my lips
That male protien of which I am so fond
Applying Vitamin E to my poor bruised nips
Offering myself up for BEYOND BEYOND

And
As Cheney swivels as he will and must
Pursuing every opportunity to justify
The heartbreaking breach of faith and trust
Stuck like a dirty thumb in our collective eye
Snarling like a shark Drunk with the blood of others
On his lodge brothers' blood in the shrinking tide
Snapping like a rabid spaniel at McCain's and others' mothers
All I can think of is beside (beside)
The absurdist world of Beyond (Beyond)
Where Eric Cantor shinnies up to every stud in heat
Where that bitch from Alaska is
everything of which I am not fond
Where Bush dies like a mangy dog at our feet
Because we offered ourselves up to those motherfuckers
We forced ourselves to believe they were not lying
Those lousy, cynical, blood-addled cocksuckers
I could off any one of them without even trying
Yet we comfort ourselves with our little Golden Man
Exhausted, bent, perpetually stooped
Unable to experience emotion other than
What it is like to be terminally pooped

And yet (and yet); we go sailing into the Golden Dawn
Of Shittybank and Shank of America
Calculating which lousy investment we have yet to lose upon
Putting our loose change on America
win, lose, or draw