Sal Salasin can be reached at salasin@wln.com. He has a book forthcoming from Oxygen Editions in San Fransciso.




Look the
Parthenon on my
coffee cup and it's
been a pleasure to serve me.
In the meantime I'm getting ripped off
by consultants.
But suddenly it's
New Jersey Office Supply and
every place has a parking lot
in front.
Only the sight of the homeless could
drive me to work.
"You see?" says my boss,
"There _are_ alternatives."
I firmly believe all human history
can be described entirely in terms of the
interaction between contractors and
middle-level management.

It's five o'clock Friday I'm
alone on the system.









I'm no different I'm
just armed.
The lights are on but
nobody's home.
Victim of glossolalia and
bandier of multisyllabic words like
"bite me,"
trapped in another Barbara Stanwyck
noir-in-a-small-town on
cable tv.
Let me kill him.
It would look good on my resume.
My mother called me "dearie" because
she could never remember my name.
And this is my girlfriend, Charlie Chaplan.
You know, the
"little tramp?"
I want to move our relationship to
a new level.
Germ warfare.

What did I do this weekend?
Ritilin, mostly.
Suicide.
I like to think of all the problems
it would solve.
Hi.
I can't come to the phone right now
because I'm dead.
But your call is still important to us so
please hang up now, and
we'll get right back to you.
And still they drive touch-toning to work
in their expensive cars. Anyway,
I didn't mean lying Nazi bastard in
a bad way. I believe in the freedom to
think, say and charge anything I want.












So I ast her straight out,
"Which would you prefer,
Me,
Or 150 pounds of potting soil?
Oh, you would, would you?"
A pain of the neck, as you say.
Love your neighbor yourself.
I don't want to be spoon fed this stuff I
want an IV drip.

Edison was deaf in one ear which was
why he never invented stereo.
That's the kind of epistemology we need,
one that creates knowledge out of thin air.
Also popular on radio shows where
Rush reads from one of those rare first drafts
of the Constitution with
the word "suckers" still in it.
Note to the Wise:
I'm always more pliant when medicated.
Little Miss perception.
If it weren't for my bingo and lottery winnings
I couldn't _afford_ to live off welfare.








I'd like four years and seven months of silence, please.
A genius of tantrums and heavy-lipped pouts, and if
anyone needs me,
I'll be surprised. All I need in my life just now
is Jesus and a vibrator with six extra batteries.
Drive fast and eat cheese,
that's what I say.

I take my marching orders from Pat Buchanan.
It used to be a large, black dog.
I kind of think of birth control as
"learning from your parents' mistakes."
Then I went out with Xena for a while,
Queen of the Amazons, but
she wouldn't make a commitment.
And Elvira got jealous.
Don't deny it I have a pornographic memory.
A wiff of chaos was in the air on that fateful day
I first encountered the
criminal just-us system.
Then I accidentally cut off my head
while combing my hair.
Or so the police said.
If we're not who we think we are,
then who the hell are we?
And give my best to Betty Ford.












Feeling no siller than Dick Powell
on loan to the French Foreign Legion while spying on
Commie-paymaster-to-the-Vietminh Vincent Price in a
Saigon set absolutely identical to Casablanca
but with conical staw hats.
Warner Brothers, 1949.
Don't speak French,
Don't speak Vietnamese,
Soft and silly in Legion uniform,
out of luck on the cusp of Asian
revolution like
Duke Wayne, Rasalind Russell,
and Clark Gable before him.
Americans in a California
like flies in that amber sunshine,
caught forever wide-eyed, innocent and
stupid in the brights of history.


And suddenly I was watching myself from
the corner of the room,
the first time outside of closed circuit
security cameras
anyone paid any attention
to me at all.
Same camera angle, though.
Out-of-body experience,
or just robbing a drugstore?
You decide.
I'm not sick I
just bear watching.
"Friends do things for each other,"
I told her.
"Sex is a thing."

And for this I'm missing Joan Rivers on
Home Shopping Network. I think of my father's
last words:
"Don't, Son! That gun is loaded!"
I want to die like my grandfather,
peacefully in his sleep, and
not like his passengers,
screaming and trying to leap out of
the car.
Newt sez:
"Give Your Money to the Rich
and Follow Me."

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