Rick Leddy

Gidget Goes to Hell

Harbinger summer moon hugs the horizon

The Suburban Lawns screeching art school punk

Su Tissue a psychotic bird

Her eyes wide darting, warbling comatose helium-induced screams 

We are filled with Ludes and cheap pitchers

As Rick shanks the mosh pit with his rage

Growling at the world 

Elbows jabbing, legs kicking to the staccato beat

His body a tsunami on the dance floor

overwhelming all in its path

He gouges the smoke-filled room with bare hands

ripping out the still-beating heart 

of the Long Beach night

Lakewood Punks circle

Sharks sensing blood

Predators swimming in waters

Where they are not welcome

Our Ocean 

Our Beach

Our Club

Fuck Off, Lakewood

You post-war, cookie-cutter gateway to Hawaiian Gardens

Grand-slammin’ burb-ghetto of the original Denny’s

Our bodies move in slow motion blur

Lips and cheeks numb from prescription hypnotics

while Rick dances first-degree murder

He thinks about his brother's cells rebelling against themselves

He fights the Monster the only way he knows how

Lashing Out

Wounding Air

Looking to bare-fist the cancer

But knowing tonight, anything will do

The Suburban Lawns play Gidget Goes to Hell:

Gidget gets a hand

Into Daddy's pocket

Silver keys, shiny red sports car

Speed-shift, baby, on PCH, yeah

She's not goin' to school

Surfer's rule!

Oh, Gidget goes to hell!

Arms like psychotic wheat

Lakewood punks pinballing off Rick

Slamming, bouncing, boomeranging

Until Rick detonates his suicide vest intention

A body flies into the drumkit on the beat

The stage now a black hole sucking in violence

Another Lakewood Punk rolls over a table

Leaving spilled beer and anger in his wake

It’s an All-American Movie Barroom Brawl

With Rick as its sun, pulling in furious worlds

Fighting three to one, a Lakewood Punk pounds his back 

as he smashes another to the floor

Beer mugs fly in slow motion 

Missiles leaving thick golden liquid contrails

of alcohol assured destruction

I bushwhack through flesh and bone 

past bodies thrown into the tempest’s path

I am spun around by unseen hands

a knuckle introduces itself to my forehead 

My glasses fly, shock stars burst

Blind and suddenly enfolded in tree trunk arms

A bouncer from a thousand miles away shouts:

Stop that shit!

As my inner child screams

I didn’t start it!

Secretly glad I was saved from future hurt 

Ashamed at the cowardice of the thought

My pride more pummeled than my face

But then it stops 

All of it, as suddenly as it had begun

The Eye of the Storm

A dark cloud front of panting bodies part

Revealing Rick

Half-naked dangling commando

An exhausted, exposed Noah punch-drunk wavering 

His pants shredded, gone, Houdinied from the brawl

Like magic, Grandfather clocking for all to see

The house lights up as wounded punk warriors limp off

Slipping on minefields of beer-soaked French fries and nachos

The Suburban Lawns gingerly reassemble on stage

Theatre Art kids traumatized at dress-up suddenly real

A Lakewood Punk staggers into frame

Spitting sparks into dry tinder

Yells at Rick

WHY? WHY DID YOU START THAT FIGHT?

(My brother might die, and I don’t know what to do)

But, synapses refuse to connect with speech

Rick pauses, fish-gasping explanations

But, sometimes a fist is worth a thousand words

So, he answers with a hard right to Lakewood’s temple

And the room explodes again

My eyes visionless in fuzzy conflagration

A soft filter belying a war zone

The crowd becomes a single beast of faces and body parts

A living entity, its maw chewing rage 

Electrified, feeding and enlarging

A summer thunderstorm threatening apocalyptic wildfire

Quick, unpredictable, violent

Then just as suddenly

Gone again

Christie and Rick stand bloodied Tony and Maria

Bathed in light, alone on the dance floor

Christie covers Rick with a borrowed flannel shirt

A 99-cent thrift store kilt with sleeves

She tenderly wipes taffy spit strands from his face

The crowd thins, dissipates, sniffing for the next thing

Searching for new chapters written in blood and insanity

The Nugget-A-Go-Go fades to grey

The tchotchkes of violence sprawl on the sticky floor

To be swept up and sanitized

Until the next show

I search for my glasses in house twilight

And find them cowering under the bar

The damaged frames twisted and wrecked

I put them on

One lens scuffed and dangling

As we stagger out,

licking wounds both real and psychic

I drive home alone under the ghostly nightlight pall

The satellite reflection stings my face

El Camino roaring alone in breakneck 405 emptiness

Window-open, wind rushing, nearly blind

My foot pedal to the metal  

I’m Gidget Gone to Hell

breathing the hot, frictioned air of the summer night

Howling at the fast lane’s bitter, leering moon