Thoroughly Modern Helen: A Tribute to the Anti Club

Helen, the proprietor of The Anti-Club
has been around since Day One of punk
She’s The Club Owner That Time Forgot
stuck in a land of acrylic sweaters, J.C. Penney’s bras
and seventeen-year-olds smuggling vodka into the men’s john

If you lifted up the tips of her bleached-blond pixie-cut
you’d probably see Black Flag bars tattooed across her matron’s hump
and “Search And Destroy” in Gothic letters just below her midriff bulge

She’s the only one that could ever get away with
charging a performer who wasn’t even getting paid
twenty-five cents for a cup of water…
Nobody playing there gets guest-list privileges, either

Helen has no interest in music, art, poetry or culture in any form
unless, of course, it has to do with making money
or her daughter, a former disco-singer
who is now an actress in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
Yet Helen will die with the place

Helen’s idea of Hell would be
twelve performance artists showing up
with various vats of unidentifiable substances
two country and western bands with drunk lead vocalists
and an all-girl politically correct San Francisco art band
who, for an encore, insist on simultaneously showing their tits

Helen’s been living her own personal Hell every night for the past ten years
…with no end in sight