Rick Leddy

Flying Saucer Safari

The Suburban Lawns are playing 

at the Nugget-A-Go-Go

Su Tissue a psychotic bird singing

Flying Saucer Safari:

Station wagon full of Fritos

Coke and Twinkies, stale Doritos

Head for the desert, Interstate 10

Pull off anywhere, and then

Concentrate, don't make a sound

We'll psychokinetically pull one down

Flying Saucer Safari

Flying Saucer

Flying Saucer Safari

Her eyes wide darting warbling comatose helium-induced screams 

We are filled with Quaaludes and alcohol

As Rick shanks the dance floor with his rage

Growling at the World 

Elbows jabbing, legs kicking to the staccato beat

His body inundates the dance floor 

A flood overwhelming all in its path

A surge that cannot be contained by false pharmaceutical dams

It is felt by the Lakewood Punks 

Sharks sensing blood, predators swimming in waters

where they are not welcome

Our Ocean, Our club

Fucking Lakewood Punks 

Bodies Move in Slow Motion Blur

My lips and cheeks numb from the yellow pills

And Rick Dances a Dance more murder than celebration

Cancer they said, his Brother's cells rebelling against themselves

He fights the Monster the only way he knows

Lashing out in movement, wounding air

The floor explodes in Spontaneous Inevitability

Arms waving like psychotic wheat

As a body flies into the drumkit

Set in Motion by Rick,

a black hole sucking in the violence of worlds

Another Lakewood Punk rolls over a table

Leaving spilled beer and anger in his wake

It’s an All-American movie barroom brawl

Violence with Rick as event horizon

Fighting three to one 

One Lakewood Punk pounds

his back as he smashes another to the floor

Beer Mugs fly in slow motion 

Missiles exchanged leaving thick dark liquid contrails

We try to hack through the Jungle of Anger and Panic

To get to the madness vortex 

Rick’s dust devil fists wind milling

Bodies thrown in the tempest’s path

As I am spun around by unseen hands

and contact is made by an invisible fist

My glasses flying, shock stars bursting

Then suddenly it’s calm

The storm cloud of bodies parting

Revealing Rick

Half-naked dangling commando,

his pants ripped and disappeared

somewhere in the screaming night

Wounded punk warriors limp

Across shallow blots of alcohol 

Kicking up ground French fries and nachos

The atmosphere thick with fear, confusion and elation

Theatre Art Kids crying and traumatized

at dress-up become shockingly real

When a Lakewood Punk Runs up

Yelling Face to Face with Rick

Why did You Start the Fight?

It’s spitting a spark into dry tinder

Rick Pausing, thinking, a thousand thoughts racing

Synapses Refusing to Connect with speech

Unwilling to explain

He punches Lakewood and the room explodes again

Half-Naked Warrior keeping usurpers at the gate

The crowd coagulates into a single beast

Faces and body parts blurred 

Its maw chewing rage and testosterone

Electrified, feeding and enlarging

And then All Quiet Once Again on the Long Beach Front

Christie covers Rick with a borrowed shirt

A 99-cent thrift store kilt with sleeves

As the audience thins and moves on

Bored, leaving to find other stories written in insanity and ugliness

The lingering ghosts of violence swept up and sanitized

until the next show

I search for my glasses

And find them cowering in a dark corner

The damaged frames twisted and wrecked

I put them on, one lens dangling

And we all leave, licking wounds both real and psychic

I drive home in the early morning pitch

Bitter Moon Leering

El Camino roaring in breakneck 405 emptiness

Laughing even though it hurts

I Believe

When I was a kid

I believed in flying saucers

As I peered out my night window

From the top bunk bed

I saw one fly into my dusty, rectangular universe

It hovered and blinked kaleidoscopically  

A vision of better worlds not filled 

with muffled arguments from behind closed doors

And I knew

It was coming for me 

To take me back to my real planet

Because I knew I didn’t belong here

It was the only explanation for the anger and pain

The only way to comprehend the loneliness of my alien skin

I believed in flying saucers

Even though we lived under a flight path

and I had undiagnosed astigmatism

Because I wanted to believe that there are miracles

Instead of a dark, endless universe

filled with people like me

Waiting to be taken Home