A Night At Kathy's Korner
by Robert Morgenstern

In front of Kathy's Korner
There was room for many cars
For it was still quite early
For this seediest of bars.

Kathy was setting up as usual
And everything seemed all right
But there was something insidious
About the guests on the way that night.

The Drummer arrived first
And dragged his drums on in
He was fat, pimply and pushy
And nobody's kin.

Shortly thereafter
Arrived the guitar
Then with the bassman
They stepped up to the bar.

Finally the vocalist
With her usual frown
The band took their drinks
To the stage and sat down.

Outside, a Bovine violin
was lost in the dark,
Whining and crying
And trying to park.

As the first notes were struck
The band came alive
And with a hiss and a shudder
The Party arrived.

Some entered the front door
Some came through the back
Some lay dormant, under the floor
And oozed up through the cracks.

The band started rocking
Like they could do no wrong
The Bovine violin
Just did not know the song.

The Party was as evil
As the worst witches'  brew
They had killed more people
Than any criminal crew.

There were Rickettsia species
And Salmonella
Pneumococcus, Mycoplasma
Chlamydia, Bartonella.

Erlichia danced
With Leptospirosis
The Borrelia species
Defied diagnosis

Brachyspira danced wildly
With his old friend Brucella
And I saw Treponema
With her latest fella.

Some waited tables
For all this riff-raff
They weren't Union waiters
But they were all Staph.

Kathy danced on the bar
Letting everything gyrate
Spindly limbs flying
Olive Oyl on a hot-plate.

The Borrelia species
Jumped out of their cysts
Got up and danced
(What else?) The Twist!

Pneumococcus said "rock us
We ain't no suckas
You know you can't shock us
We're bad mutha-fuya's".

Lactobacillus yelled "Thrill us
Make with the jive
If you don't fulfill us
No one leaves here alive!

(Now the band didn't have to hear anymore
They'd each been in that chapel room before
With a loved one's casket, there on the floor
The somber clergyman with mercy to implore
The deceased a victim of this Devil's Corps
To enjoy the warmth of love and sunshine no more
The hushed whispering, just outside the door
Each band member instinctively knew what was in store).

The Cocci were cockeyed
The Bacilli were stiff
They raved and they reeled
To each rock and roll riff.

Faster and louder
The music superphonic
Paint peeled from the ceiling
The band looked Demonic.

Kathy slipped out
Not a minute too soon
While the Bovine violin
Was still out of tune.

The room grew hotter
As the music played faster
The overheated Party
Faced bacterial disaster.

Cell walls melted
Cytoplasm dried
Flagella burned away
As the Party was fried.

Kathy's Korner became Kathy's Courthouse
The band was the judge
The defendants got the maximum sentence
And became bacterial sludge.

The band packed up as the sun arose
And left laughing and joking
Kathy left too, and never looked back
At the ooze of death still smoking.

Kathy's Korner looks the same
I drove through that town the other day
Nobody wants any part of it
They can't sell it, or rent it, or give it away.

Kathy's moved to Mexico
Where she runs a Drive-in called Queenie's
Getting rich on an original dish
Nachos and McSweenies.

Now Kathy's Korner's empty
Nobody goes that way
Except some nights, a Bovine violin
Who still thinks he wants to play.