The billionaire who re-built this town
Lived in a metal crate on Fremont,
Drove a ten-speed bicycle, died
Among the mole people,
Who live in the 500 miles of tunnels
Underground, with mayors, furniture
And families, a place they say is
For those who’ve slipped across
But does anyone know for sure?
This city was built on smoke and mirrors;
What it says always means something else.
The only people on the street anymore
Were the meth heads, forced to keep on moving,
And it’s hard times still for panhandlers,
Those who cop a squat have grown excrementally,
And there’s hit men walking up and down the strip
As the gangs shoot the shit from each other.
There’s only a smattering of tourists now
(Except of course at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign
Where the line is as long as at the Grand Canyon).
A 90-year-old man with pierced nipples and diapers
Stands as alone as the one gondolier watching
The Christmas show. Santa Claus
Goes ho ho ho on a Harley.
A man stands asleep at the crosswalk in full cape,
Then saunters along Las Vegas boulevard
Gazing at the 3D from his different sphere.
It is not a place for the sane, but what is?
The Elvis artists still have a place in this world,
And there's 99 cent shrimp cocktail like its the 70s,
And the ghosts from game shows past have stayed:
Rich Little, David Copperfield, Ru Paul.
And cars still drive on Sammy Davis Jr. Parkway,
Frank Sinatra Drive, Mel Torme Way.
It’s Cabal-central, but what place isn’t?
“Seek the World,” says the billboard at the Grand Canal,
Where every manner of mirage beckons over the shoppes
And the billboards for debauchery must, above all, be tasteful
Enough to fill Beef and Broads, Pin-up Pizza,
Menopause the Musical on a pink taxicab.
At the Chapel of the Flowers, a masked wedding,
And everywhere, a lucky 7 feet social distancing,
“No Masks. No Dice.”
“Cover your mouth” is written in the sky.
You can carry a gun, sample actual prostitution,
Chase a yard of Hurricane with a douche flute of baby bhang
As long as you submit to this maskerade,
The last bastion of “anything goes,” “here it stays”
Exposed as a total sham.
But the weirdness goes too deep at Binions and the D,
Psychedelic liquid running along the ceiling,
Filling up the market floor with phosphor,
Champagne bubble footballs. By El Portal
Theatre, through a sweatshop storefront
Window, a wall of monkey handbags
Turns the handle on to the 5D reality:
The glitter of material to build out any dream,
Ideas rolling like dice on a roulette wheel,
Lights freed from any context
To recombine in new promises,
Bells ringing at seemingly random times.
