Acid Vegas ‘13
A Psych Las Vegas Poem
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They don’t even have gambling
In the Cosmopolitan
…very cosmopolitan
We start feeeeeling good
Our senses redline
The world becomes italicized
The noise becomes amplified
Knocking ’em back
Our drinks sweat
Hoping the booze would dumb us back
Down to earth
But it’s no use
Through crowd
Past the hectic flow of Marquee
& the refurbished cigarette machines
Dispensing single-serving art
Along the walls and down an empty hallway
A silence hits us like a BANG
Temporal nexus —
Walking by giant red stilettos
& towering aboriginal figures
Some with horns
Bearing spears and armor of gold
They guard the pantheon
Of ancient Vegas
Vampira
Howard Hughes
Frank Sinatra
Mia Farrow
Ann-Margaret Smith
& the forgotten queens of 60s burlesque
Once desired and world-famous
In some dazzling mausoleum now
And just as quickly as it came on the vision faded
As all heavenly visions do
Back behind us in the time fog
We submerge down into the lobby noise
Among the jaded waitresses
Barkeeps
Cigarette girls
& go-go dancers
Like a glimpse of Summer 1969
Manson Family visions
Of Hollywood poison invading holy desert
You ever hear him speak? That Man Son…
“I live on the ground
I live on the earth
I don’t live where you live
I lived in Hollywood and I had-all-that
The Rolls-Royce and the Ferrari and the pad-in-Beverly-Hills
I had the surf-board and the Beach-Boys and the Neil-Diamonds
And the Rob-Snobs and the Bee-Skees
And the Elvis-Pressleys-the-Best-of-Bestleys and all them guys…
The Deena-Martins and the Nancy-Sinatras
And ‘will-ya-do-it-to-me-Honey? I-hear-ya-do-it-good’
And that kind of ‘will-ya-come-up-to-my-House-later?’
So, I went through all that
And I seen that was a bigger
Prison than the one I got out of…”
We hit the strip
where tourists wander around lost
taking pictures of everything
and peacock showgirls stand around
charging for poses and you look up
and Britney Spears is forever entombed
in Planet Hollywood
The landscape of Vegas reflects
its schizophrenic inhabitants
Spawned one day out of the dirt below
The skyline has raised and so have the stakes
Cost of living
Whatever
There’s a new glass ceiling
and all the wealth is on the penthouse floor
Implode the old and erect the pre-fab new
While “Feel So Close To You Right Now” plays on every corner of the
Strip
Like a bad radio dial
A dressed-up distress beacon drawing in coveted youth
In this dead frontier
— future invading the present —
Only the young bring anything in
And they aren’t young for long
Like a 3D holographic centipede god
We curl up to and writhe around
In a beautiful sequin cesspool
With Liberace on the piano
And lost in the blue sea
Of our Liquid Crystal Displays
We’re all just trying to do something simple —
Connect…
The great big desert mirage
Is big enough to fool us all
And the only real crime
Is to act like you’re above it
But the Vegas commercials
Tell you one thing
And reveal another
Nothing stays here
There’s nothing here for anything to stay
It stays with you
And it stays with you no matter how high your tab is
