What Happens in Vegas

What Happens in Vegas

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Kenny A. Chaffin

(from Prosthetic Amalgams)

            In my dream Las Vegas was being shoved against the mountains. At first it was actually fun riding the berm of a sand dune as it slid across the desert -- something like surfing  the Sahara. As we approached the mountains the turbulence of the sand increased and a huge lake formed between us and the tall buildings. We struggled to stay on top of the crest and not fall into the flaming abyss that had opened below. I somehow made my way to the left and up a path leading away from the bottomless pit. From there I saw the high-rollers in the high-rise fighting to escape. They were beating against the blue translucent plastic windows with anything they could find. Pushing outward, stretching the hot plastic. Some were already screaming as they fell towards the burning conflagration below them. Others were bending and bulging the plastic windows. Vague body shapes pushing outward beating to escape what to them must be hell -- only to fall free into another. Panic and fear making them fly. 

No Longer Dressed in Black (poem)

 

No Longer Dressed in Black

 (from my first poetry collection: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SQ9JYC)

They no longer dress in black,

they’ve become accountants,

clerks, engineers and thieves.

Cobain is dead and so is Lennon

that mop-top leader of revolutions.

Now middle-American angst

replaces the illusion, replaces the

heroes pushed beyond death, the

black that waits for us all.

Only the Goths are left and they

never bought into it anyway, their

blackness worn only on their sleeves,

insulation from society.

They used to wear black, these clerks,

thieves, accountants; clinging to it,

as if to hope, but knowing there was no

challenge, no future, no reason to believe.

They were pulled inexorably

into society, depressed enough 

to go along, depressed enough

to suck the blackness into their bodies

and smile as they hand you your change.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 6/26/01