Las Vegas

Reek of money and cigar smoke,
Ceaseless prestidigitation
Of dealers’ hands,
And baleful eyes watch
From every wall and corner…
Fiery cauldron in the darkness,
Headlights streaming in along the highway
And weird lights in the sky,
And all those nameless bodies
Buried out in the desert…
Early in the morning, exhausted gamblers
Slump over green tables,
Marooned in light-puddles,
Wan dummies in tuxedos and glittering dresses
Sit mummified, playing ghostly baccarat,
And pallid hookers linger on sidewalks,
Lined with gimcrack wedding chapels.

The weary Paiutes trekked across the valley
And pitched their tents here;
They gathered seeds, sweet sage and wild celery,
Camas and caraway,and the bulbs of the sego lily,
And ate, with relish, locusts and rattlesnakes;
They hunted elks and bears in the mountains,
And smeared their bodies with red paint;
They thrived in this desert, and buried their dead
With eagles, under the killing sky.
When the Spaniards arrived, they took one look
And went the long way round, afraid to venture in,
Leaving a blank space on their maps.

Needs, desires; - in the end, who can tell the difference?
Only think the thought and the appetite appears.
You don’t even know you’re alive!
Load your gun with golden bullets
And fire them into the sky;
Here you can lick up the drunkenness of life
Like champagne off a showgirl’s behind.
There you are, standing in the nuclear blast,
Grinning skull gangster with neon skin,
Gambling it all on the dice-throw,
On the turn of the roulette wheel.
Drive the golden spike into the heart of life;
Study the cards at the blackjack table;
Ghosts move through the gilded mirrors
In the hotel of laughing corpses.
The heat is a white tiger on your back.
Time to make a killing and get out.

Bugsy Siegel slumps on the couch
In a Beverley Hills mansion,
Three well-aimed bullets in his handsome face,
One of his eyes shot out.
That was how the movie ended.
As he always said:
“We only kill each other.”
Right up to the end,
He still thought he could win,
Out of luck and out of his mind,
Doublecrossing everyone, even himself,
Blinded by the desert.
He himself always loved to kill,
To hear his victims scream and beg;
He had to be the one to pull the trigger,
The Angel of Death, manicured and suave,
Careful not to get blood on his suit.
This, the kid from Hell’s Kitchen,
Who had dropped waterbombs
On passing cops’ heads,
Snatched purses
And stole from blind men’s cups.