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| Author: |
Tony O'Neill |
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Tony on Las Vegas Man: “This poem is based upon my last trip to Vegas. I've only been there twice. The first time I got married to a girl I had known for less than a week. The second time was two years later, and I was divorced from her and heavily strung out. I thought that if I drove to Vegas, where I didn’t have any dope connections, I would somehow be able to quit. I took a bag of magic mushrooms with me. When the withdrawals started I was in a room at the MGM Grand, a hotel which had a Wizard of Oz theme. I ate the bag of magic mushrooms and my brain almost melted. Lesson: heroin withdrawals + magic mushroom = instant terror. The result was me stalking the streets of Vegas half out of my mind trying to score dope. I ended up fleeing Vegas so I could get to downtown LA and my dope connections before I lost my mind. This poem is inspired by that trip.”
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| Submission Date: |
| 14 Jan 2010 |
Category: |
Poetry
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In Podcast and Chap-book
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Las Vegas Man
Las Vegas man
suck my cock bloody
neon craps tables
and the grinning tin man
another breakdown in the MGM grand
the wheel spins and he starts
screaming, screaming
until the security hustled him out of there
off the strip in Vegas is where the action is
the tiny motels populated by whores and burnt out drinkers
red noses and discarded bottles of Ensure
nothing but pawn shops and crack dealers around these parts
a dead coyote on the road
a massacre of red and browns
turned inside out by a speeding Dodge
fleeing to the city limits
substituting heroin with mushrooms
going insane as the wallpaper melts off the walls
4am elevator rides
talking to a biker called Fuck Face, making a connect for meth
he has breath
like a hung-over Chinatown morning
staggering around garbage bags
under the toxic July heat
whatcha want meth for
ya seem like a junkie to me
I don’t fuck with that shit
and he flashes me a mouth full of tweaker teeth
Las Vegas man
50 dollars for a license
and 2 years hard labor
two years of black dildo and crying jags
Las Vegas man
tears across a thousand miles of desert
the sky contains no possibilities anymore
and the tape player doesn’t even work
One of Tony’s favourite youtube videos: SUICIDE - Ghost Rider
Stand-out lyric: “America / America / Is Killing Its Youth”
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