i read
three days too late
buried in a back page
of the statesman-journal
that ginsberg passed away.
o obscurity
o duplicity
you once packed
concert halls and universities
with beatnik eccentricities
wrapped up
smack-dab
in the center of controversy
the midst of which
is a frenetic collage
of hybrid ethnicity
o queerboy sad
a quaalude gag
couldn't stifle the noise
that gurgled out
in screaming carbonation
and became the fad music
of a generation
and a generation past.
foolish children now blindly dance
on your tombstone
hurky-jerky heroin hopsteps
to soul-stoned music
dear sir
you are
hydrogen gas,
a petrol blast
backdrafted, contained
then eventually passed
through the slipstream conscience
in a fading pixel afterimage
alive forever for a second
winding through warm copper diodes
vibrating cathodes and anodes
of magnavox or zenith or quasar
just a heartbeat more
ghost lined on blank eyes,
stipic traced on wounded minds
then stuffed down
deeply embedded in a puckered
line of grey scar tissue
'til all that's left to find
is a grainy memento snugly
centered in crumbling yellow
pages of Time magazine...
-- j sheridan fenn ca. 1997
Like this:
Like Loading...