I didn’t feel the sting…
My upper lip blew up and curled into a frozen Botox Elvis sneer. I ripped through scorching versions of Devil in Disguise, All Shook Up and Kissin’ Cousins, the King’s dubious solid gold classic about incest.
I self medicated with Benadryl and vodka and channeled Samuel Coleridge. A thousand white doves fluttered from golden cages. A camel caravan snaked through drifting sands on the trail to Timbuktu. An albatross came rapping at my chamber door.
I felt like William Burroughs. I studied the distant horizon of my toes in silhouette against the wall of the Naked Lunch Diner. Outside my window the call to prayer went out from the minaret.
I awoke to find I was not in Tangier. It didn’t seem fair. I bought the ticket and took the ride. I should have been there by now, not stuck up in the crotch of a fuzzy tree.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Elvis has left the building!
Your Own Back Yard - Michael Gillan Maxwell 
January 29, 2012 at 9:48 am
And that’s not the half of it!
January 29, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Thank ya- Thank ya very much! Here’s a little song for y’all right now called “In the Ghetto”.
January 29, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Cool piece. Enjoyed the language in this. Is this from a longer story?
January 29, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Thanks. Haha – no – it’s from a true life experience 2 nights ago. Antihistamines do really bizarre things to me. it’s a damn good thing I don’t enjoy them as a recreational mind altering substance or I’d be even more of a
whack-a-doodle thanI usually am!
January 30, 2012 at 4:36 am
Like the red painting a lot! It’s inspired by bullfighting?
January 30, 2012 at 1:05 pm
Thanks Berit! It certainly could give that impression. However, it’s actually a digital image – derived from one of my photographs – this is from a recent series I made from photographs I took in New York City – of graffiti, peeling billboards, random street signs, garbage and in this case a segment of an accidental paint spill on a construction site. The image was cropped and rotated and the saturation, color and hue altered to come up with the image. I appreciate your comment. The next step would be for me to do a large painting of this image.