Hotel Dementia

Well, the foreign ambassadors
have finally arrived
and the early evening sky is wellin’ up
and threatenin’ to unload
its whole rag-bag repertoire
of woeful confessional poems.

And the heiress in the lobby
is channeling Nefertiti’s hairdresser
and the orthopedic shoe salesman
from Sheboygan is playin’ Russian roulette
with a juicy piece of jailbait from somewhere
down South and his uncle Pico’s .38.

And the front desk clerk
is desperately searching for a vein
and the ladies bridge club is hopelessly pixilated
and the Siamese twin bellhops (from Bulgaria, no less)
are furiously bickering, non-stop (Jesus, what a mess),
over the proper split on a skinny tip from
a second-rate rock star’s third-rate groupie.

And it looks like the clown in the hermitage
is nursing a hernia and the Moonies are kickin’ it
old school out in the courtyard,
and the shriners are already swashbuckling drunk
and bum-rushing the ballroom, hoping to catch
Miss Lily Lafontaine’s big finale.

And the monkeys are getting restless
and the management is clearly negligent
and the mad scientist with the bad rug
and the ridiculous accent
is down in his makeshift lab,
trying to graft bat wings, a lizard’s tail
and a nine-volt battery
to a giant habanera, mumbling
Mad!? I’ll show zem who’s mad!

And down the secret staircase in the back,
the hotel detective is in hot pursuit
of a giggling ghost woven of calliope tunes,
old dreams and clove cigarette smoke (and,
suspected of cold-bloodedly
short-sheeting all the beds).

And the Chinese acrobats are shooting craps
and standing on their heads in the presidential suite
(while sipping a supernatural tea made of mandrake,
purple hyacinth and dragonfly wings).

And now the chef is raising hell
and all the Mexicans are screaming,
the golem is getting’ twitchy (the gargoyles,
a little bitchy) and the poet on the thirteenth floor
is foolishly attempting to breed newspaper tigers
with tinfoil unicorns, his mother pounding and
pounding on the adjoining door,
horrified at the sounds she’s hearing.

But, at least the hit man is dreaming, sweetly,
of brown-skin girls and fancy boat drinks
and the nightclub singer is rehearsing
his (or is it her?) routines
in front of a cracked funhouse mirror.

And the smoldering gypsy-prince
(always napping in the pantry)
is conjuring sinister hexes
with which to whither the rival man-roots
of all the other mules in the stall,
leaving their women desperate
and defenseless before him.

And way up in the attic
the colonel is orchestrating a grand battle at sea
in an ancient cast-iron tub,
and the sniper up there with him
is making outrageous demands for chicken wings
and pink champagne, and the bodies long buried
under the boiler room floor have finally become
fed up with all the noise.

And all the lights begin to flicker
and the walls start to bleed Chambord
and books and magazines
begin to flap around the rooms
and the place is really hoppin’ now
and there’s no cap’m at the helm
and the weather’s finally jumpin’ down
with both No. 13 feet.

And the triple-headed hellhounds have been released
and the wing’d horses all set free
and there you find yourself, inexplicably,

standing in the men’s room,
the exact same time every goddamn night
for the last … who knows how many years …

a dumb look on your face,
a carnival mask in your hand,
an intensely dapper chap telling you,

You’re the maintenance man.

You’ve always been the maintenance man.