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for Allen Ginsberg
O fool for life
childhood amidst smokestacks
1950s starched white years
you lived hashish dreams and spoke too soon
aged in genius cloistered shell skull shop dormitory
pop shop professor slop
heard your name echoed through hallowed halls too late
after teachers taught you limerick licks
spelled for you grammared you out
who dreamt in Solomon's bed
hiccupping good-byes to mother
and watched Whitman move through throat
while your beard caught fire with monks
who heard father laughing
wept at critics' lack of humor
their abundance of uncharitable wordplay
who sat lotus while Berkley boys chanted
eli eli lamma lamma sabachtani
who howled eternal wisdom
could not stop soul from spilling out
wrote prolific elegies for classic hipsters
made love to them in hallucinations
carried their bodies on your shoulders towards Calcutta
wore skulls around your neck as prayer beads
who defined art as strip tease
O disembodied Boy Scout
no voices of angels here
no crazy talk peace chanting rebels
O jester American
whose madman charm
mishmash realism ecstatic surrealism
Hum Bom attitude
patio office in Northern California
under foggy harbor
where American ghosts carried you through suicide missions
theoretical journeys into souls of angelic men
O Commi crusader
apocalypse let loose on your soul
by media hounds from hell
whose apple pie dish melted in the desert road
to nowhere Denver Tangiers Paterson Columbia
trembling under gentle hand of Peter
pockets emptied into fan mail
who celebrated momentary now forever then
whose hate-breaking laughter
retraced palm to groin to heart
to center of being
O queer king
paranoid star-screwing enemy lover
who embraced Jesus
called him Buddha, Jaweh, Guru, Satan
who is Kaddish on bathroom floor hugging knees
hooked free association
saw velvet visions no revisions
first thought best thought anachronisms
bit into chocolate-coated middle class
exchanged strophes for food
waited for cream after crunch
O fascist hater
glory beaten bathtub poet
Allen
the key is in the window
the key is in the sunlight in the window
the key is in the bars in the sunlight in the window
copyright 2005
Armine
Iknadossian |
