At the end of the world, every jukebox-- stuck
with only one selection left, so they punch it in, this boy
and girl, the very last lovers in an abandoned bowling
alley on Venice Boulevard, the cherry-colored vinyl disc drops
in the stylus slot, and out comes an echo shot of chamber strings
and muted Strat--my God it's that Barry White song!--he sings:

"My darling I … can't
get enough of your love…"

Nothing amiss here, really, at the end
of the world, our boy and his girl show
no fear--in fact shortly they get busy
tossing a bright blue Frisbee back and
forth across the abandoned bowling alley,
with strobe lights splashing on all the walls
like paint balls, and the mechanical Pin
Sweeper - Slash - Spotters in high gear,
chomping at the bit for those pins, retracting
and then attacking like prurient skeleton jaws
with freshly grinning dentition every fourteen
seconds, plus all the hand dryers going off
at once, heavy, heavy breath, and big black
bowling balls coughed from the Return Chutes
like lurid tongues…

The boy grins, and spits
in his palm, then tosses his Frisbee--it arcs like a knuckleball
across ten lanes, buffeted on some mysterious pocket of convection;
he watches his girl skirt gutter ball troughs with long gracefully loping
strides and hops, her eyes locked on the bright blue prize, and when
she hauls it in, she lets out a little squeal, while Barry White cries:

"I don't know I don't know -- I don't know
why--"

This boy, he's damned
well aware he'll never get it quite like
this, ever again, after all it's the end of
the world, those slanted skylights that frame
the bowling alley are all stained purple and
rust-red from the blood mist contagion,

not to mention the creatures out of doors who
look like Jan-Michael Vincent in Buffalo 66, these guys
with tarnished steely eyes like pin balls and wheezing
breath, they're dying to tell the world about their
still-fervent needs and wants if their forebrain fonts
weren't dried up like an L.A. river in December, yet
the zapped synapses somehow retaining squatters' rights
in the cranium--stubborn as a diapered John Fante in front
of AMX Mar Vista Bowl on Venice

Boulevard, Fante the Scrivener chafed by hard scrabble and
taco grease, utterly blind and limb-less from the diabetes, with
some flesh-eating bacteria at the bridge of his nose, Fante dictating
reams of new apocalyptic prose to the Gods of Gaseous Venus
--John Fante with bowling shoes strapped to his weeping stumps,
tin beggar's cup nudged and humped by a darkly-stained
crotch that is spreading, spreading…

"Listen," the girl breathes, hard, at
her boy's back, snaking her silken hands
beneath his shirt, sliding them up to cup
his pectorals, "you've never even told me
your hat size..."

The boy grins
again, and goes: "Hey, I realize that, baby but
CHECK THIS OUT!"... He breaks free

of her embrace, he aims his Frisbee
at a fresh set of pins on lane ten, then whips
that disc as hard as he can, it whistles on a low line, striking
the head pin dead on the stripe, as if to decapitate a
honking-ripe Mallard duck. This pin spins, it totters, and
wobbles a bit, then after nearly half a minute
topples to the hardwood!--monkey-wrenching
the mechanical pin sweeper device in mid-rake; it lurches
there, stuttering, agape and then not--in the mouth
of the alley at the end of the world… Outside

the wind begins to howl, while a lone jukebox
breaks it down-- one more time how it's "not
enough, it's just not enough…” Our boy kisses
his girl's ear lobe, whispers her name… My
darling I -- and the scars hiss and crackle
in the vinyl as flame.

BIO:

Dennis lived in Las Vegas for two years. The world is fucking flat.  He says this is a fact.  I'm not sure if it's true or not that he once had a 4-hour hard on.  Maybe you can go to the slyphides hotel and find out.