The David Lee Roth Fuck Poem with Language Taken from Van
Halen I, 1984, and The First Letter of the Apostle Paul to the
Church at Corinth

                     What you are expecting is a familiar riff on the theme
of girls and cars, where Laurel Canyon rings with big beast reverb
         and in the top-down weather, the freeways clog with dinosaur
                     machines all pointed towards the water gone green,
         sky lighting up the boulevard, Pacific Ocean blue poured on gasoline.

                     It’s a new leather jacket and stiletto boots and four girls
from high school, too young but still cute, pink high tops and hula hoops
         in the back of Daddy’s Cadillac, 455 cubic inches of open throat,
                     the sound a boy makes when he imitates hot shoes
         burning down the avenue. I pass and I leer and they give me

                     the universal salute, extended middle finger, even the driver,
both hands off the wheel. We orbit the light, circle the block and I tell them
         the most honest thing I know: the way of love is the highway,
                     and in your malice you are still children. I was sent to give
         sparkling advice in strange tongues, though my tongue should cease,

                     because all you have to do is slide down out of the hillsides
and see the runaways staggering up Sepulveda, begging quarters for the RTD.
         Hollywood is the gaping maw of an insatiable clown which devours
                     everything it sees, indiscriminate in its appetites, and soon
         you girls will be dancing seven sets a night, three songs a set,

                     garbed in the sacramental costumes of sexy librarians
and or Catholic school nurses, whatever. We ain’t talking ‘bout love,
         but rather the feel of velvet cream dollars tucked into a saggy garter,
                     the soundtrack reminders to take care of your bartender,
         your waitress, for every dancer down to just her fishnets to Windex

                     mirror and pole at the end of each three song set, house rules,
and be sure to tip out the busboys who so deliriously vow to become men
         who drive convertibles with white vinyl interiors and festoon
                     the rearview with dice and a pina colada-scented freshener.
         It is as if California causes blindness, an inability to see the future.

                     So let me tell you how it is going to be: once the evening
is gas-filled for ten dollars a tank, everybody who wants some can park
         at Carl’s Junior and walk to curbside, where a pony-tailed girl
                     waits only for someone willing to listen to the tribulations
         of being 14, to sing her a love song of how the six-dollar burger

                     once only cost three, and hope alternately meant the sound
of Stratocasters or glass-pack mufflers, or even the big beat of bass drum,
         and if I speak in the tongues of men I am only a clanging cymbal
                     of warnings, part known, part obvious. There’s always
         a Doctor Feelgood paying off cops in the back of Winchell’s Donuts,

                     and there’s always a guy waiting out back with a business card,
one that says producer but who actually owns the Carl’s Junior franchise
         down the block and he says things like: come run away with me,
                     because that is what a girl must learn to do when she casts aside
         her Topeka past. Come run away with me for a six-dollar burger

                     laden with any condiment you desire. And me, Diamond Dave,
I am a messenger here with this fair warning. That man, what he desires
         is to reach down between his legs and ease the seat back, and he’ll tell you
                     to leave the shoes on. Stand firm. Let nothing move you.
         I’ll tell him myself: don’t you know she’s coming home with me?