tribute to ginsberg

      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