"BARBIE, COME DOWN!"
"BARBIE! BARBIE, come down!" Barbie is sitting high in an old growth redwood tree, doing her nails. She's protesting something, but she can't remember what, or even what a protest is.
She falls out of her perch, lavendar nail polish trailing after her in a psychedelik splash to the ground. I catch her in my Popeye arms and we speed away on my Harley. I'm Bruce Springsteen, but with gray hair, telling Barbie to "strap her legs 'round my engine" - she's stiff, even in a dream.
Now we're at her place, but I'm a GIANT, standing before this doll's house. She invites me in for a gin and tonic, but I clumsily step on her house and crush the entire upstairs and living room.
Ken appears, as half-Ken, half-donkey, quoting Shakespeare. He's doing an estimate on the repairs: he's holding a clipboard and a cup of coffe with a donut dunked in it. Barbie is a bit tipsy now, after four gin and tonics, as the moon rises above her demolished roof. Michael Jordon is trying to sell her a pair of Nike sneekers, but he can't take his eyes off of Ken, who's kicking and bucking all around the back yard, coffee and donut flying.
A priest appears and performs a blessing just before it rains. Barbie's swimming pool is full of purple and green feathers.
I put on Barbie's new Nikes and turn into a blonde, blue-eyed transvestite running down the boulevard past a thousand neon crackling dreams of hope and glory and tall trees forever.
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(c) 1999, A.S. Leeper
ISSUE #7 FRONT PAGE - With "DENTAL MADNESS" and poetry