This neighborhood’s really gone to hell since the zombies started moving in.
This used to be a decent place to drink ‘till these vampire skanks turned all my friends,
Coming out of that backroom all looking weird.
Nobody sees it, or that the water outside’s still rising.
They just keep on dancing like Peggy Lee or their pathetic store-bought gris-gris will save them.
They really think their glorified hot sauce will ward off that silver-tongued schemer
At the end of the bar with the lime-green Maori mug shooting back
Peach flambés without so much as a singed eyebrow? Nooooo!
Like that lampshade on his head makes him all incognito.
So why’d he have to come here?
Why not Houston?
Guess he can’t do Phoenix ‘cause they got no souls to lose.


You know the Hotel LaFong?
With the rotating lobby bar?
Yeah, last night it just flipped on all the sudden.
It’s still out there spinning like gangbusters,
Lit up like a skull candelabra on Day Of The Dead.
But that block’s got no power; how can that be?
& over here’s the opposite problem: the juke’s playing everything a 3rd too fast,
& someone set Jurgen’s freshly-severed head on top it,
Safely-stowed above the AMI logo,
But no one’s claimed credit.
Poor bastard’s stuck forever with his tongue out,
Rictus frozen in a raspberry,
John The Baptist-by-way-of-Jayne Mansfield pose.


I look up from the tapeworm wriggling at the bottom of my tequila glass.
Don’t know how much time’s passed,
Long enough I’m seeing pufferfish float by my head,
They’re overturning the hanging paper lanterns & tiki torches,
Turning them into sunbursts
Casting creepy yellow half-moon shadows off spittoons.
The outside’s like a fishbowl but the inside’s a tinderbox,
& there’s no more music ‘cause the jukebox has been melting,
Just the smoke detectors writhing in rhythmic pain.
& the girls are still swinging those getaway stems of theirs
Squeezed tight into snow-colored stockings shimmying & grinding
While the flames gobble them up a couple at a time.
The bar bottles start popping like giving a signal for smoke to come out of the floorboards,
I can’t see shit except Satan’s got Carly the cocktail waitress in a trance	
With a cottonmouth tongue flicking in her ear.
I know her family, & she’s probably the only one here ‘sides me
Who ain’t been turned into a ghoul!
Oh, that tears it, goddamn it!
Get away from her you, you bastard!
You wanna destroy everything pure in the world?!
Careful, that’s a vintage fucking Majestic Z lamp, scumbag!
Leave my friends alone!
Take your vampire pussy posse & go back to Hell!