DESCRIPTION:
Nikolas Schreck reads his poem "Tripping with the Leprechaun" a tribute to his friend & mentor Tomata Du Plenty written for the Art Share LA Tomata Du Plenty Show held in Los Angeles 3 May 2014 - Published on Tomata's birthday 28.05.14 (Poem Below)

"Tripping with the Leprechaun"

By Nikolas Schreck

This time let's do it at Fairbanks' tomb.
You take one half, I'll take the other.
Hey, it's August, maybe the Lady in Black
Left a bouquet for the Sheik.
Feel anything yet? Or is just the heat?
You never know with this street shit.
It's hitting hard at the rocket-tomb.
Escape the sun in The Gaslight's gloom
That Artaud book we nabbed from the library's under your shirt
Add a cocktail or two to our caper
What? I can't hear you over those shrieking strippers.
So you're a Coney Island Baby, you say?
Yeah, in the dim light, I can see you as a 19th century escapee from the side-show funhouse
Everything's different now.
When we first met, a southern born-again peanut farmer was in office.
Now, a right-wing Hollywood dictator's got his finger on the bomb.
Back then, the artsiest stoner girl from pottery class trudges with me through gray high school corridors
Like convicts awaiting summer parole, she shows me the contraband
Your contorted grimace on the hot off the presses Slash
"Get a load of this guy!"
It may be crude ink dots on cheap white newsprint
But my world's exploding in a riot of color
One look at your manic mug, an Egon Schiele etching twitching in straitjacketed electroshock,
And I know that the days of the Eagles, Foghat and Frampton are over at last
Slash says you sing for "the one and only group in this galaxy to have done away with guitars and other lame gimmicks"
That's what's got me - before I even hear a single note
Whispers of war from Clockwork Orange London and the bankrupt Bowery
One look at you and I understand - revolution's reached LaLaLand,
Nodding out in her Quaalude slumber,
Sunday after school let out Rodney's radio voice whines "The Screamers'll be at The Whisky..."
Summer Solstice sacrifice, I'm slashing off my long hippie hair,
Donning a black faux-leather jacket, one of my dogs' collars buckled around my neck,
Rushing to meet my tomboy doppelgänger dream date at Licorice Pizza
Where a towering cadaver called Kim tells us he's pissed off
Because the fucking Screamers cancelled their gig due to illness
Whatever bacteria made you sick that day,
It wasn't half as bad as the Germs I had to sit through instead
Your no-show's adding mojo to your mystique, confirmed in full
When I catch your fireworks on the Fourth of July - the future's finally here
Shiny with sweat, your voice is hoarse now
From shouting about Eva, Dolores and Twiggy
You make sneering Tommy Gear give me a beer
And tell me with a disarming grin that
You really dig the black vinyl shirt I bought at the Pleasure Chest
In between enthusing about Nico, Neu! and Goblin,
And setting out your dream of world domination through video intimidation
You're becoming my agony aunt whose Dear Abby advice eases my adolescent angst
In that bomb shelter under the Pussycat,
Your face becomes a madman's Masque
A new form of mutant life spawned from the coming Third World War
That tab we split in the crypt shot me a Rumpelstiltskin revelation:
You've been an undercover leprechaun all along,
A creature from the faery realm on an obscure elfish mission
Leaving us mortals with visions of a better world
Where everybody would be made to feel important
I leave you a wilted Wilton Hilton gorilla rose at your ashes
In an icy wall
You are Hollywood Forever.