freaking out yelling
something about blood
something about goblins
incoherent, the ramblings
of a feral man who suddenly
finds he has no reason to
leave the house.
In the background I can
hear what sounds like
a girl laughing or maybe
she’s screaming
or maybe he’s just
playing a porno
on his new widescreen
home cinema.
It’s funny that Slash
has a home cinema
because he doesn’t
have a bed and he
doesn’t have a fridge,
just dozens of snakes.
He keeps his drinks and
frozen mice in an ice bucket.
But I’m done laughing
at Slash’s antics right now
so I dish it to him straight:
Dude, you have to clean up your act
the tour starts in three days
that’s just enough time to detox
the kids have paid good money -
yada yada, the usual spiel.
I really give it to him actually:
you wanna end up like Johnny,
washed-up and strung out to dry
at twenty-five? You wanna be like
Janis, Jimi and Jim man, another
H-wood r ‘n’ r victim, “Fuck yeah,”
he gurgles. “Totally!” then I hear
what sounds like breaking glass
I’m sitting there thinking maybe
an intervention is the only way,
how it won’t be the first time one of us
is dragged kicking and screaming to rehab
in readiness for a stint on the road
when I notice it’s all gone quiet.
I figure maybe Slash has fallen through
his coffee table or something.
I figure there’s no point trying to
talk someone down when they’re reaching
the zenith of a five-day weekend
so I call up management and tell them
that our guitarist needs patching up
and of course they say “which one?”
and I say “the one with the hat – the one
they’re calling the best of his generation”
and the girl who works over there,
the girl who answers the phones
she says to me – get this – she says
wait a second, who’s calling please?
and I say: It’s Axl, sweetie
and she’s like, Oh, OK…Axl who?
and I’m like, it’s Axl Foley from Beverley Hills Cop
who the fuck you think it is?
And while all this is going on
at home Slash is rolling around in shards of glass
laughing and gurgling and trying to get his
zippo to work so he can fire up another pipe
and though I’d dearly love to fire his ass
the fucker has a habit of bouncing back
from these drug jags and either way
another world tour starts in seventy-two hours.
2 comments:
Wow. I felt like I was THERE man...
its funny how you have made these seemingly out of touch characters, to me at least, very real and relateable, like guys down the street that I grew up with and am now following their career. I honestly think Guns should be paying YOU to write this book.
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