Mala Noche

Mala Noche (1985)

Talk about Great Depression déjà vu—
America devolving downward really fast
Like Argentina into Third World nightmare…

All the hustlers down on First Avenue—
No different than the cute Mexican kid in
Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche (1985)…

A movie 20 years ahead of its time—
Based on Walt Curtis’ sad chicken queen
Amour fou love/lust story in Portland…

Part-time poet grocery clerk Curtis—
Knows all the winos, derelicts, bums but
Really wants to know this Mexican kid bad…

What makes the movie co-contemporaneous—
Neither the Mexican kid or American youth
Today can read write speak English at all.

American millennial youth are dumbed-down
Unemployed immigrant wetbacks today—
Third World Children of the Walking Dead…

Mala Noche says what Gus Van Sant didn’t say—
In Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho,
Elephant, Last Days, Paranoid Park—what’s that?

What’s it like under The American Dream?
What’s it like to be a Third World young hustler?
Wake up and smell the coffee, baby…