Psycho Boulevard: Poetry and Essays with a Difference

By Dennis Doph

THE REASON FOR PSYCHO BOULEVARD

There had to be something beyond Apocalypse (Maybe). The author
Has searched the bowels (?) of his soul trying to find what makes him
Actually tick. Apocalypse taps into the anger and the lust.

Psycho Boulevard is the dregs of the barrel. These are the things
We think, then wish we hadnt. As such, they are valid. But they
Cannot be taken at face value. The alternate title for this is
The Face Behind the Face Behind the Face.

As the legendary comedienne Renee Taylor commented in her famous
Short film satire on Michaelangelo Antonioni:

Sono la vite senza fine
Sotto la vite senza fine.
Mangila al vestro svago

Dennis Doph is his own worm, living in the belly of himself, recognizing
The worm beneath the worm, and feeling just fine about all of it! And if
He eats his own worm, it is not cannibalism. It is Epicureanism.

Grab your own worm and enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 19, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465329370

Dennis Doph

Now retired, DENNIS DOPH was a twenty-year wordsmith with a major studio in Los Angeles. His previously published works include Instead of Solitaire, Stuff Happens, Psycho Boulevard, and Beyond Beyond. He currently lives in California.

Book preview

PAR EXCELLENCE

In this life there aren’t many examples of pure excellence

Mental agility to most people just doesn’t make much sense

But of all the artists who’ve had their fences made & mended

These are the ones whose sense is the most extended

Joan Didion only stands five feet in her bobby sox

In her artist’s life she has really taken some hard knocks

Buried her husband and her daughter then inviolably

Wrote a thoughtful book dealing with this Magical Mystery

     Then to play Joan Didion suffering her year of great duress

     They hired Vanessa Redgrave that six foot two giantess

Tom Stoppard has never been a playwright suffering from myopia

On Broadway twenty-seven actors spinning off Coast of Utopia

And if anyone is deemed artistic in this non-artistic nation

It’s our honcho Gore Vidal with his Point to Point Navigation

In past days there’ve been few producers who make me more bilious

Than that groin oriented male bonding gent known as John Milius

Now he’s brought his male bonding a few steps closer to home

Showing us passions unrepentant in the underworld known as Rome

     Lindsay Duncan and Polly Walker activate those scandals

     Under my trundle bed Mr Ray Stevenson can stash his sandals

Over the years no Yank actor has yanked me from my stupor

Than the craggy guy who goes by the cognomen Chris Cooper

First in Adaptation Chris took home the Gold Guy teaching things

No hunk should teach

Now he’s upping his own ante in a shocker known as Breach

Trendy David Fincher leads the View Halloo into this pack

Guiding movie gods & goddesses thru the maze called Zodiac

     Bob Downey bounding here & there and then that living doll

     Out from under butch Chloe Sevigny we’ll filtch Jake Gyllenhaal

The Lives of Others did not collude to keep us in the dark

But to sing praises of the Kraut known as von Donnersmark

Von Donnersmark knows how to make a tale that really matters

About lives in torment and souls in shreds and tatters

Good Night and Good Luck left us all palpitating to a man

About the jazz diva called Reeves Christian name Dianne

     When she swings & shakes her booty in a knocked out designer dress

     We can mourn Rosemary Clooney and a jazz scene that’s a mess

Of all the DVDs in packs that rate a solid A

I must give precedence to the one which flogs blond Alice Faye

Alice did work of highest quality a fact which can’t embarrass

Then she gave Fox a mighty heave and cleaved to buff Phil Harris

Yeah Alice now appears to be a woman for all seasons

Supplanted by that pig Betty Grable for all of the wrong reasons

And of all the opera lessons that couldn’t get much bolder

You can knock your socks right off with Tristan und Isolde

     Birgit Nilsson had high C’s to embroider all her work

     She could floss her tessitura and push away the stork

Allan Ginsberg is a poet who’ll not stand upon the shelf

Now in famed and fond biography he celebrates himself

And every time you turn around there’s an actor without stain

Let’s celebrate for the fact of himself Mister Michael Caine

The Prestige gave him a chance to show off all his ins & outs

Then Children of Men was the capper in case you had some doubts

     Yes Let’s celebrate in extremis these twelve artists so intense

     These men & women who’ve given their lives

          To define Par Excellence

GERRY FORD WAS A DOOFUS

Gerry Ford was a doofus, no doubt about it

Gerry Ford only wound up being vice president

Because Spiro Agnew the corrupt power gorged

Bearbutt from Maryland Had become a negative

Asset

For the Nixon Administration Threatening

Their re-election. So Nixon and his brain trust

Came up with nonthreatening genial Gerry Ford

Handsome blond musclebound former linebacker

Who had nothing

Nothing at all above the neck He had to take

His gum out of his mouth before he could walk

That’s a fact Otherwise he would fall down from

The supreme effort of multitasking His wife

Betty Ford

Was the real Alpha in that bunch The one everyone

Respected No one ever expected Gerry to become

President Least of all Gerry Then things got pretty

Rough for Tricky Dick Impeachment was near

Yeah for those of you

Who think Bill Clinton is the only one who ever

Came within a cat’s whisker of impeachment

Think again Only in Nixon’s case It would

Have happened The shame of it! So Gerry Ford

Became the dumbest

President these United States has ever seen

Yeah Even dumber than the incumbent And

That’s pretty fucking dumb So give me a break

Gerry Ford sat out the 187 days of his Presidency

Chewing Wrigley’s Spearmint

Walking carefully Letting Betty make the important

Decisions Later in Palm Springs Betty confessed

Her alcohol addiction With a husband like this

She was in good company—she and Mamie Eisenhower

And Pat Nixon

Must have really propped up the bar between

The three of them—Betty made herself famous

More famous than she had ever been as First Lady

Running that famous clinic in the desert To keep

Liza Minnelli and all the lushes and the tweakers

Drug free

While Gerry spent the last many many years

Of his fabulously unproductive life Playing golf

Basking in the shade of his wife’s Alpha personality

If this is accomplishment I’ll have no part of it

Get away

With all this sodden faux sentimentality About

Dead Presidents—this is not Ronnie Redux. This

Is just a doofus who fell into a Presidency by mistake.

End blog. End subject.

BUGGERING PRIESTS

In the far flung archdiocese of Los Angeles

Little Roman Catholic boys and girls protect their virtue

Keeping the goods away from those hundreds of

     Buggering priests

Knowing what you don’t let the Good Father do

     Can’t hurt you

Now eight hundred million dollars has been settled on

     Five hundred odd of the variously abused

The grand old ringmaster Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroger Mahony

Kept capacious records of which of his parish children

     Had been scabrously used

Church records were hidden in drawers and cabinets

     And cleaning closets

All over the length and breadth of the enormous diocese

So when Roger’s Buggering Priests put on their frocks and

     Flaming purses and holy rosettes

There would always be some fresh new girl or boy with which

     Those priests could take their ease

          Eight hundred million

          Total cash reward

          For the insatiable hunger of Roger’s Buggering Priests

          Even a billion

          Would be a bit absurd

          As they celebrate exemption from forty years

               Of carnal feasts

          All over the archdiocese

          Churches pretend nothing has happened

               They’ve all been bitten by the silent bug

          Father Mike gets another quick release

          Blowing his altar boy and dismissing him

               With one quick shrug

When Vatican Two roared in like a clumsy fuck happy lion

Back in the Sixties when men were men and women were

     Even more so

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroger was young and buff like a Lord of Zion

Sported thick black hair upon his torso

Begat a whole legion of similarly equipped Buggering Priests

Who followed Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroger into the fields of power

And not a few indomitable mustachioed nuns

To take away the virtue of the diocese’s fairest flower

          Hear the sobs before the massive altar

          Of Our Lady of the Queen of the Angels

               Rrrrrrrroger’s Rog Mahal monument to himself

          Hear the victims crying fumbling into their psalter

          While the records of their abuse are still kept

               Upon some shelf

          God forbid

          We should ever have testimony from brave

                    Rrrrrrrrrrrroger Mahony

          Rrrrrrrrrrearranging his surplice beyond his fat still

           Erect cock

          Eight hundred million is far from adequate

               kind of phony

          And the archdiocese is still rrrrrrrrrrreeling in post-coital shock

          So let the conscience money pile up

          Let the buggered thousands file out into the choking day

          Let’s not disturb the saintly sleep of Archbishop

               Rrrrrrroger Mahony

          And leave the Buggering Priests to rrrrrrrrresurrect

               Another fucking rrrrrrroundelay

TWO LAMPS

My mother never had enough lamps

In my childhood all we had were leftovers from

My father’s dead mother Living in father’s dead

Mother’s house The house my mother hated

The woman my mother hated

We had the dead woman’s lamps They were

Freestanding floor lamps The kind with four

Peripheral bulbs and a domed large bulb

In the center Very ugly lamps

For Christmas during my eighth grade I suggested

To my father We get a real classy table lamp

For my mother We shopped for one Something

My father and I almost never did together

Selected

A really classy looking table model a single

Three way bulb sitting proudly on a straight

Circular china base It was painted with a red peony

Just one single red peony My mother loved that lamp

Later that year

When the truck ran destructively into our house

Amazingly the china lamp was spared amid the wreckage

Of our living room Yes the two tacky freestanding

Floor lamps from Grandma Doph were spared as well

The furniture was trashed

So the china lamp continued in our lives the Queen

Of the Living Room Later in my senior year

Of high school My father and I shopped for another lamp

This one a slender white alabaster lamp Beautifully carved

An austere princess of a lamp

To sit in the same room as the Peony Queen lamp

These two lamps lived side by side in our unhappy house

Switching places from one side of our unhappy living room

To another throughout the years Later much later When

Mother prepared to move

To California After my father had