The Leopard Man

THE LEOPARD MAN (1943)

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The Leopard Man

The Cemetery Scene

Kiss of The Panther Woman

Expert Witness

Magic Realism

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The Leopard Man

Killer Mexican film noir —

The perfect ode de cologne

The sweet scent of death

Scary Val Lewton —

Creepy Jacques Tourneur

RKO Femme fatales of film!!!

Clicking Castanets —

Cemeteries late at night

Death in the Dead of Night

Dark Forties Suspense —

Endless Sinister Suspicions

Who’s gonna get it next?    

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The Cemetery Scene

The best scene —

In the whole scary movie

Some queens think

The jilted young lover —

Stood up by her boyfriend

Stuck with all the dead stiffs

Locked in the cemetery —

Darkness creeping into the

Deepening deadly denouement

Gaunt Graveyard Statues —

Leering down at the poor thing

Waiting for the stealthy Killer

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Kiss of The Panther Woman

Stalked by the fiendish —

Black Panther of Death

No girl is safe, honey

But not everything —

Tiptoeing on cat’s feet is

A little innocent Kitty-cat

Defenseless cuties —

Are tres Vulnerable as

Killers prowl the night

Half the Thrill —

Being a Killer at night

Your Stalking noir footsteps

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Expert Witness

What makes a Witness —

Expert while testifying

At a Murder Trial?

The erudite, all-knowing —

Dr. Galbraith played by James

Bell in The Leopard Man?

How calm cerebral —

The pipe-smoking professor

Of the local Museum?

The least one you’d —

Suspect as a Killer yet so

Knowingly cold-bloodied

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Magic Realism

Just ask Miss Marquez —

That primal noir image:

Blood flowing under the door

The Unseen Murder —

The scream behind the bolted

Locked door, then the Blood

The thud of the thug —

The young daughter sliced

And diced so horribly bloody

The Unseen Murder —

Hidden from Us Viewers

There on the Other Side

I Walked With A Zombie

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)

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I Walked with a Zombie

Zombie Badboyz

Darby Jones

Drums in the Night

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I Walked With A Zombie 

I lived with a whole town —

Of Living Dead Kansas Zombies

It was worse than LA Zombieville

Night of the Living Dead —

Just a tacky, trashy reminder

Of the Living Dead in Kansas

Especially the tall handsome —

Naked Zombie Boyz there in

The cane fields at night

Hoodoo Voodoo drums —

The heartbeat of the Living Dead

Beating them off in the moonlight

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Zombie Badboyz

Jacques Tourneur’s —

Queen Bee Horror classic

Still so chillingly Sexy

Poor Sandra Dee sucked —

Into Cumly Carib Film Noir

Just like Innocent me

Hoodoo Voodoo in Kansas —

Pretty much the same thing

Ever sucked a zombie off?

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Darby Jones

Hear those beating, throbbing —

Voodoo drums tonight, honey?

I know I once did, my dear. . .

The Moon high overhead —

The twisting tall Canefield path

The crossroads guarding secrets

Voodoo ceremonies late at night —

But first I had to pass the test

Going down on Darby Jones

So tall, hung and handsome —

The whites of his upturned eyes

Placating his Living Dead Penis

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Drums In The Night

Voodoo drums beating —

African gods dancing haughtily

In both Haiti & Kansas too!!!

Up there in the balcony —

In the Granada’s “Nigger Heaven”

Doing the hot zombies, honey

My knees stuck to the —

Sticky Pepsi Cola floor

Getting reamed inside-out

I was nothing but —

A no-good little Emporia

Slut of the Voodoo Night!!!

DEAD RINGER

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Ding Dong Blues

The Bird Bridge

Murder Ordained

Praise the Lord

Dead Ringer

Trashy Hollywood

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Ding Dong Blues

A sure sign —

Of the changing times

When Hostess Twinkies

Gets outta town!!!

Time moves on —

Even though I got the

Ding Dong Blues

But what can you do?

Bankruptcies and —

Liquidations across

This fair land of

American opportunity?

Will Emporia end up —

Like dead decaying

Modern day Detroit

Ghost Town USA?

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The Bird Bridge

Down from up there —

The Sunken Gardens on

Twelfth Avenue where cute

College boys smooch

Past The Granada Theater —

Down along Commercial

All the way to Sixth Avenue

Running East and West

All the way down —

Past the Santa Fe and

Burlington Tracks

Steel rails in the night

Down to Sodom’s Grove —

Cottonwood River Bridge

Follow the country road

Down to The Bird Bridge

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Murder Ordained

A new updated version —

A made-for-TV gothic

Neo-noir flick shocking the

Small town Emporians

What could be worse —

For The Religious Right

Than a Lutheran minister

Killing his lovely Wife?

Bashing her head in —

Throwing her off some

Rickety old country bridge

Down into The River?

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Praise the Lord

Smashing her head in —

Her bloody fingers clutching

The old bridge railing before

Falling down into The Drink?

Let us Praise the Lord!!! —

Sing Hymns to Matrimony!!!

The worst Kansas Killers are

ORDAINED FOR MURDER!!!

An Adulterous Adam —

In a Kansas Garden of Eve

Killing his own Wife with a

Cheap Bottle of Jacques Bonet

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Dead Ringer

Lorna Anderson returns home —

After serving time in the Big House

For murdering her poor husband

Religious Emporia simply shocked!!!

In this new louche Hollywood —

Made-for-TV remake of the tragic

Original murder there in lovely

God-fearing Bible Belt Emporia

“What a fucking dump!” —

Exclaims Bette Davis exhumed

From the grave especially to play

Killer Lorna Anderson again

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Trashy Hollywood

Joan Crawford plays —

Poor cripple Reverend Bird

Stuck in a wheelchair up

There in the lonely Attic

In this Cabaret version —

Of “Dead Ringer” in Drag

The Granada gets to do

Grande Dame Guignol!!!

A Kansas Burlesque —

That says it all and more

A Lutheran Minister in drag

Lorna as Dyke Transvestite!!!

Murder Ordained

MURDER ORDAINED

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Hush, Hush Sweet Lorna

Gothic Groanings

Hollywood Hauntings

The Granada Theater Knows

Lorna Tells All

The Emporia Gazette

Midwestern Noir Muse

Deconstructing the Fly-Over State

Escaping Emporia

Returning Home

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Hush, Hush Sweet Lorna 

As Sandy Bird fell —

Downward off the Rocky Ford

Bridge into the murky waters

Of the dark Cottonwood River

Falling down in slow motion —

Down from the old cables and

Gothic girders silhouetted by

The cruel Kansas starlight

Leaving bloody handprints —

Clutching the stark railings

Staining the whole Granada

Grande Dame Guignol Movie

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Gothic Groanings

There in the putrid pews —

In the shadowy sanctimonious

Aisles of the Baptist Church

Where murder was ordained

Blessed by the congregation —

Preached by the gaunt gothic

Minister who turned Emporia

Into a TV murder mystery

Like “Dead Ringer” (1964) —

“Strait–Jacket” (1964) and

“Lady in a Cage” (1964)

The list going on & on

“Die! Die! My Darling!” —

“I Saw What You Did!” (1965 )

“Queen of Blood” (1966) and

“Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?”

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Hollywood Hauntings

Not to mention others —

“Frightmare” (1974) and

“A Knife for the Ladies”

Plus “Blood and Lace”

“The Killing Kind” (1973) —

“Cry of the Banshee” and

“That Cold Day in the Park”

Plus “Night Warning”

As well as “In Cold Blood” —

“Queen of Blood” (1966)

“Berserk,” and yes

 “Hush, Hush Sweet Lorna!”

Gimme some Grande Dame —

Guignol Cinema and I’ll give

You an American goth flick

Worthy of wasted Emporia!

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The Granada Theater Knows

“Come in, Madame Capote! —

Suave smooth Soothsayer and

Famed Kansas Clairvoyante of

“In Cold Blood” Psychic Powers!

The Granada Theater is packed —

All the way to the crowded Balcony

With Halloween Trick or Treat

Emporians eager for Cheap Thrills!

All the town’s staid churches —

Are boycotting the Cinema Séance

Delving into the Dirty Secrets

From whence Bird Bridge flowed

“Oh, Authoress of Cold Blood! —

Oh, Great Emporia Enchantress!

Give us the Holcomb Down-low

On louche Lorna’s Love Life!!!

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Lorna Tells All

"Commune with us, tonight —

Sweet Sister of Sin and Sorrow

Confess your Skanky Secrets

Bring on the Dark Shadows!”

“Speak American Goth Spirit! —

Read our Red State Beads!

Tell us all the Wretched Secrets!

About the Rats in the Cellar!”

“Aghast and totally Disgusting —

Tell us about The Bad Seed!

From whence flows all our tacky

Fly Over State Fuck Up’s!!!

“Tell us a Goth Ghost Story —

Befitting our Midwestern Noir

Skeletons in the Dark Closet!

What goes Bump in the Night!!!”

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The Emporia Gazette

Soon the Emporia Gazette —

Began gossiping like the tacky

Scandal-Rag National Enquirer

Telling the most horrible Tales

Small town idyllic Emporia —

Once used to sleepy streets

And elm-shaded neighborhoods

Safely hidden from prying eyes

Suddenly turning into a louche—

Lorna Anderson Murder Mystery

TV Show that would’ve simply

Shocked poor William Allen White!

“Hush! Hush! Sweet Lorna!” —

The Gazette Headlines Hissed

“What Ever Happened to poor

Sandy Bird?” Emporia asked

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Midwestern Noir Muse

I have this Midwest noir —

Muse whispering inside my

Midnight movies dreams

Haunting me late at night

I simply can’t help it —

I blame Raymond Chandler

And Mickey Spillane as well

Plus campy noir Miss Capote

But most of all I suppose —

That old Yoknapathawpa queen

Miss Faulkner deserves most

Of the shameless noir blame

Deep South Delta Dixie —

Decadence rotten to the core

Mildewing just like my tacky

Midwestern noir existence!!!

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Deconstructing the Fly-Over State

Funny how things work out —

In ways you’d never expect things

To work their way through the

Nefarious detours & divagations

I’m more open to it now it seems—

Once I got used to being down on

My knees in the gutter looking up

At the heavenly stars above

Pretending to be hoity-toity about—

Being way up there above it all

Looking down at the Fly Over State

From a lofty jet plane high above

Suddenly I was born again it seems—

Plopped down like a runny juicy tacky

Cow patty from the haughty sky above

All the way down to Midwestern noir

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Escaping Emporia

Thomas Wolfe seems somewhat—

Misguided to me when he says in his

“Look Homeward Angel” that we can’t

Ever return back Homeward again?

It’s just the opposite for me—

I tend to think that we can

Never actually leave our dumpy

Homes ever at all, my dears!

We’re stuck with it forever—

It’s embedded deep in our

Dizzy devolving head like being

Helplessly born Middle Class slobs

What makes us run away?—

We run from ourselves madly

Helter skelter but unfortunately

There’s simply No Escape at all

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Returning Home

Nostalgia for me ends up—

Being nothing more than a touchy

Migraine headache that simply

Doesn’t want to go away

I’ve got the Granada Theater—

The Strand and the 50-S Drive In

Playing movies for me all the time

Up there inside my balcony head

Old film palaces haunt me—

Decaying decrepit abandoned

Haunts like all those gone movie

Theaters in dying dead Detroit

My only consolation being—

The Bijou Matinees still playing

On summer Saturday afternoons

There inside my Valentino heart

The Black Angel

—for Desdemona

Well, dearest Melba literati—I finally got through trudging my way slowly but surely through that simply awful novel so lauded and praised by Desdemona so much lately.

I really can’t blame Barton for putting the novel down for awhile on the nightstand, because there’s really nothing quite as tiring and boring as a rambling black feminist Sheena of the Jungle S & M Melodramatic spiel as noted by The New York Times.

Yawn. It’s not that I’m a male sexist misogynist White Trash ignorant pig—some of my best friends over in the Sports Forums and Mr. X’s Political Alligator Pit are quite intelligent discreet dilettantes of the dinge queen genre of Black Literature.

I’ve long admired William Faulkner’s exquisite decadent Southern novels like “Absalom, Absalom” and “Going Down On Moses.”

One of my favorite Louisiana black writers is none other than the esteemed gay porno author Carl Corley—who wrote many pulp fiction classics similar to Faulkner’s two-bit broke-and-in-a-pinch slutty little paperback novel, “Sanctuary.”

Back in Baton Rouge in the Sixties when I was a rather irresponsible undergraduate at Huey P. Long’s lovely Louisiana State University—I was able to read this most stimulating gay pulp fiction classic by Carl Corley—and discuss it with my English writing professor Dr. John Hazard Wildman.

As Desdemona so lovingly noted, my academic career was rather disappointing—although Wildman encouraged me to keep on publishing no matter what.

So that there’s now in the LSU Middleton Library on campus—there in the stacks my first book of gay decadent poetry “Chicken” published by Gay Sunshine Press in 1979.

At the time there was no MFA Creative Writing Program as there is now—with the recently retiring chairperson Andrei Codrescu from New Orleans.

“The Black Angel” is a trashy Southern decadent novel that tells the racy story of the life of a handsome Bongo Boy who goes simply Hoodoo Voodoo over you know what.

It centers around a wild cargo cult of faux Zombie drinkers at a mixed View Carré bar that caters to tourists who debark from derelict cruise ships in the fetid Gulf of Mexico & the turbulent erotic Caribbean.

The Black Angel later relocates to London where he opens the first pretend gay Tiki bar in the UK . A certain young royal personage has been known to sip a Shirley Temple Mai Tai there now and then. I shan’t tattle-tale though—the Queen wouldn’t like it.

My fav drink by the way, my dears—is the Roy Rogers Mango Tango or the Mickey Mouse Mocktail. It puts a zing in your Trigger—and makes a girl wanna sing all night long…

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Anyway, things were pretty much in the closet in the English Dept at LSU back then in the 1960’s. The anti-Viet Nam War protests and Hippie Movement were just beginning—and the Stonewall Riots would soon happen in 1969 in NYC after the cops raided a drag bar on the night that Judy Garland died.

I remember it well—because that day I had to show up at the Draft Board to go through a physical, get inducted and be sent off to die in the jungles of some South Asian Hellhole.

I mention this incident because it fits rather nicely into the Melba Fiction discussion of Desdemona’s Sheena of the Jungle Dinge S/M feminist Novel which some of our esteemed Melba intelligentsia have commented  and opined briefly on—although as I said, the feminist rant gets a bit boring after awhile. The same with my rendition of white trash fiction as well I suppose, but please bear with me.

As most queer cognoscenti from back then know—one of the only ways out of the Draft Board’s inquisition of college students back then if you flunked out like I would do every other semester was to check the Box.

The nefariously evil unspeakable shameful Box without a Name—was of course the place to check your little X on the spot that declared your Homosexuality. Saying you were Homo and verifying it for the Authorities was two different things though.

“Prove it,” the gruff, butchy, mean-looking Army sergeant barked at me when I meekly showed him the forms they used to send young flunked-out undergraduates off to the Jungle Gulag Archipelagos of Southeast Asia to fight, rot and die for Nixon.

Luckily I’d brought along with me none other than the beautifully handsome young black stud Tyrone Xavier Jones—who just happened to be my fervent lover there at LSU. We lived south of campus in the notorious “Tiger Town”—a niggardly student ghetto for drop-outs, druggies, whores, nascent hippies and other down & out denizens of the times.

Tyrone’s mother was the head cook of the university infirmary cafeteria—where Tyrone in his white dinner jacket served the meals to medically vulnerable students like me. I’d worried so much about my gay lifestyle and getting drafted—that my stomach was simply too upset all the time for normal meals.

So the doctors put me on a bland diet—and I moved into an off-campus dumpy cheap apartment there in Tiger Town to try and keep things going as a struggling gay writer there in the Deep South.

I turned to Tyrone and told the shocked sergeant: “This is my black lover boy and he’s really tres hot in bed. I call him “Bon the Beautiful” after Miss Faulkner’s louche novel “Absalom, Absalom”—you know the one about Henry Sutpen who falls in love with his older dinge half-brother and goes to bed with him as his roommate at Ole Miss? Well…”

Needless to say, that got me booted outta the front door by the enraged Str8t sergeant—and banned from the military for life!!! I simply wouldn’t be good for the morale of the Troops—especially horsing around in the showers and foxholes!!!

Anyway, Tyrone and I were happily married as a mixed couple for a couple of lewd semesters—even his cute younger brother Dwayne Jerome moved in and lived with us as a three-some. He was a dealer and I got some of my most seminal inspiration back then for my outré creative writing—I can still taste the tingle so tangy and lovingly touché that made my Dixie Delta tongue curl. (See my blog “Gay Delta Review” for more flashback editions of those dayz)

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I was like William Faulkner’s poor queer Quentin Compson back then—I must unabashedly, unashamedly admit the faggoty truth. Lovely Drama Queen Desdemona—has definitely read my beads.

What more can I say—about being a miserable English Major failure back then in Allen Hall. And to think, dearest Desi, it’s been almost 50 years since back then when I was a white trash Pretender to the Throne—other than Professor Wildman, the English faculty simply detested me. I really can’t blame them—after all they banned Miss Proust, Miss Genet and Miss Ginsberg, so I was in good Exile Company one could say.

Alien Invasion

THE ALIEN INVASION

When the Aliens—

Finally showed up

Nobody expected it to be

An Invasion of Beauty!!!

By some strange twist—

Human beings had expected

Interdimensional contact to

Be rather Exopolitically ugly!!!

But rather than the—

Usual grotesque creatures,

Repulsive blobs, robots

And all that sort of thing

The Aliens turned out—

To be rather artistically

Beautiful in a shockingly

Gay Oscar Wildeian way

Nothing could be worse—

Then a tres gay stunningly

Beautiful Otherworldly Being

Descending the UFO staircase

A swishy Michael Rennie—

Pretty as Dorian Gray

So very Stylish and Gay

To The NYTimes dismay!!!

Thus the Alien Invasion—

Despite being aesthetically

Chic and so cosmopolitan

Devolved the same old way

Panic circled the Globe—

What could be more Alien!!!

And horrible than such a

Gay Galactic Invasion!!!

Capote

In Cold Blood

—for Truman Capote

Time—who needs a tornado to get to the land of oz when all one needs is a game of bridge on a lonely saturday night some nice absinthe ice tea & dreams of murder 1959 with me strangling “dick” hickcock in bed night after lovely night… as i got to play dorothy of course clicking my ruby slippers looking at myself in the mirror with that constant amazed look of stunned shame knowing she’s not in kansas anymore honey but rather overcome by her hardly bashful queenly amazement at myself now when sullen handsome “dick” hickcock comes to murder me in my dreams at night with his lopsided handsome face and sullen knowing smirk that just wouldn’t quit honey all the way until they hung him that awful dark night on the gallows & the rope jerked his neck so hard with that one last awful long squirt one last time nodding so knowingly when madame capote said this or miss capote said that or when miss capote opined about dick’s fictitious knighthood for faggy perry smith and their crummy escapist adventures in mexico on the run—all of which i took very seriously as if i were embedded in some real true crime cold-blooded mysterious tableaux vivant with two lovely male whore witches of the east and west playing along with the charming wizard of oz miss capote the game first in black and white then technicolor in all its decadent hollywood babylon remakes but especially back then sitting in the living room there in that innocent little cow-paddy plopped town of emporia kansas there on nostalgic elm-shaded constitution street where the conniving convict killers bought the rope and tape for the forthcoming true crime melodrama smirking it up at old-fashioned hayne’s hardware store while later there i was sipping some ice tea with a few of the small town intelligentsia queen bees who were still there and hadn’t made their great escape to topeka or wichita or kansas city or the west coast or east coast yet all of us who loved to schmooze with miss capote’s whiney faggoty voice pretending to cultivate kansas chic couture during our bridge game soirees and decadent discussions pretending to be wilting delicate orchids there in the twilight of that hidden secret maudlin midwestern noir ambience we were so used to enduring but knew somehow was slowly disappearing along with our disguised small town closetry and snooty secrecy since now thanks to miss capote kansas was out of the closet and in the open my dear shockingly revealed by miss capote’s trashy new yorker story quite openly and intellectually hoity-toity pretending that murder once so foul was now stylishly in literary fashion worthy of a masked ball of the nyc rich and famous so that tacky miss capote could preen and purr to herself like the cat’s meow knowing that it was time for all of us poor queens back in kansas to wise up, that we had better listen up and learn how to laugh properly my dears at the shrewd new yorker cosmopolitan cartoons and stylishly sophisticated outré covers while there was still time in that little town of ours still in the middle ages rather than being just another scene in a crime soap opera that had furnished the killers with their nefarious tape and homicidal rope with the gloomy grim gothic presbyterian church grimacing across the stark street so appropriately named commercial street with its mouldering old movie palace the granada that in 1967 would portray the horrible clutter slaughter out there in remote depressing holcomb kansas far to the west so very weird & full of déjà vu tall plains grain elevator horror years later seeing it up there on the screen that same way each time replaying it all over again and again reminding us of that eerie déjà vu flashback thing that miss capote had back then while reading that little inconspicuous nytimes tidbit about some kansas minor murder event back there in the sticks since after all murder my dears there in the infamous rotten-to-the-core big apple was certainly nothing new and that’s exactly what miss capote immediately grasped which was the idea for a nytimes best seller eye-opening true crime nonfiction novel that she knew would simply be a huge shudderingly chic shocker to all the denizens back in kansas where all those innocents back there in that naïve isolated faraway primitive fly over state region must have suddenly awoken from their corny-as-kansas zombie dream-state wondering what the fuck had happened to their idyllic somnambulant blissful midwestern reveries—and then before you know it miss capote is right there on the next speeding santa fe super chief with harper lee accompanying him as his trusty childhood fag-hag interpreter to help him ease his way into the trusting naïve living rooms and café small-talk gossiping ambience of that stunned little shocked innocent holcomb kansas community savoring each exquisite voyeurisme moment taking delicious notes for later on writing late at night in that tacky dingy garden city motel room where miss capote began composing his ultimate faggy revenge against the very same small town nightmare of his own southern tortured upbringing cast off by his mommy dearest and errant useless father only to be adopted by aunts and other relatives growing up strange as harper lee describes in to kill a mockingbird with the central idea that perry smith was like his twin doppelganger lost brother who had gone out the back door while Truman had gone out the front door and who just as well could’ve ended up like perry as a cold-blooded murderer and who now instead for some strange reason found himself in holcomb kansas reenacting that same primal scene of childhood rejection, boyhood orphanages and rough trade prison time that made him bond with this Other brother who would hang by the neck until dead rather than him—with me gossiping later on with my queen-bee sisters in emporia about the whole sordid affair like the closeted mister mosher the astute small town historian down in the basement of the civic auditorium along with the butchy lesbian miss reeble who ran the tombstone memorial business down across the tracks as well as with mrs. haynes who lived across the street from me the wife of the owner of haynes’ hardware there in emporia where the two clutter murderers bought their way to the lansing gallows and made their fame and fortune in lovely holcomb that night and later with miss capote’s in cold blood in the new yorker then as a novel and then all the movie reruns from then on with the story retold every twenty-five years or so with each generation of readers and movie viewers doing the usual de reguer updating not-so-naïve reinterpretation game of that unfathomable homicidal night but not just that because it was by then as time went by more of a performance art reenacting what we all knew and lived through as moody midwesterners back then, growing up in the hithertofore unspeakable kansas american gothic aesthetic captured somewhat elegantly earlier by edward hopper and grant wood but now recreated and updated with garish cosmopolitan stylish new yorker mock-horror chic verging on snide highly sophisticated satire that one expects of decadent east coast cynicism encapsulated by that scene within a scene as the killers drove up dumpy commercial street there in that sleepy little college town of emporia kansas past the strand and then past the granada itself where later on the movie in cold blood would stand out there on the bleak blinking marquee capturing the scene as they drive by the granada the same way these two tragic doppelganger lovers and prison boyfriends way back then drove up the street back then when the dying laidback eisenhower fifties mise-en-scene with its quaint hwy 50 and fading santa fe railroad ambience was slowly painfully beginning to fade away and enter our more cynical murder-moderné age of truly horrifying awareness that in cold blood was no longer just a novel or movie but even more so the way things really were now as the apocalyptic last days of 2012 slowly became the drive-by killer story of what our lives had really finally become……