Last Exit to Brooklyn by Alan Catlin

“I met him at the candy store….”
  Shangri las “Leader of the Pack”

Life back then, in the 60’s, was simpler
with corner store blonde chicks whose
black leathers were like a second skin,
long blonde hair down her back, too much
eye shadow, bad, but not too bad, attracting
boys with grease thickened hair, bike chain
epaulettes, switch blades and zip guns, they
would hesitate to use, Marlon Brando, Wild
Bunch tough, street wise and disrespectful
but not homicidal.  Maybe some reefer
among friends, bennies for all night soirees’,
a back room orgy with the girl no one could
remember in the hit parade duo but was the one
who could really sing, who put out like nobody’s
business. Maybe some Off Off  Broadway stuff
sneaking  in from uptown into jazz clubs and
candle light cafes, soon to be shooting galleries
once the junk man cometh.  The whole scene turning
ugly as a gangrene arm pricked with filthy needles
and too much badly cut dope; the drawn faces of
the zombie mamas tricking the tourists and
duking the cops. Black tar UPS packages and
plague wagons rolling down Dean Street,
heading for the Utopia Parkway, all those dead
end  driveways that end up against a concrete
embankment, looking out for those gang marked
signs, those do not enter, closed for construction,
last exits to Brooklyn

Alan Catlin is the poetry editor of misfitmagazine.net. His latest books of poetry are American Odyssey from Future Cycle and Last Man Standing from Lummox Press