The Serpent of many Colors and Tounges

The Serpent of many colors and tongues

Wears his coat, the street

Snaky

Like two baffled hookers

Arm in arm laughing

At their own pink coats

Sequins glittering

Like stars

They wander in winding

Stutters down the alley

Smoking the cigars

Of the serpent

Choking down cheap brandy

Bums fucking the air

Grasp the solidity of cardboard

And slide into a muttering puddle

Of dreams and hacking up phlegm

Tubercular and weeping they

Embrace the police

Who eat sandwiches

And dance the two step

And one-behind-the-head

 

With a Billy Club

In between the donuts

But a serious black

Cup of coffee

Is not as dark

As the blood

On his pant leg

When he walks

With a strident

Shudder

The serpent

Is wrapped all round his head

Like a taxi-drivers

Turban

And he ignores me

On his predatory

Way…\

I stand outside the burger

Hut and cry. Thinking

The serpent has my soul

In it’s grasp.

It’s not drugs or money

That ties me to the chair

And breaks my fragile pride

It’s time

That has made me her bitch

I’ve died in my head over ten thousand deaths

And still the serpent carries me

On it’s back through the

Alleys and galleries and food shops\

At least I’m not a bum.

I still fear for my mortality

But the flowers here are women

Who smile and men who embrace me

Even as I puke up my guts in the

Gallery bathroom….

I remember that madness

Makes us all fragile

And the serpent

I have no fear of him

Because he is only a

Bitter string of streets

And a sad story

Told by the women downstairs

Who bleeds and starves

And asks me for money

Even as I stave off hunger

I hand her a crumpled dollar

The agitated genius of the folks

Who play here would inspire me

More if the serpent didn’t demand

They pay for their gifts with debt

Punk rock for 60K a semester

Wouldn’t work out for me

I bleed in the gallery bathroom

I drink a coca-cola and thrive

On my own human suffering

And the serpent winds deep into the heart    

Of the city carrying music on every

Vertebrae. 

lovers of rain

Outside in the torrent
the lightning struck the tree
and I was 14 and we were the only
people who were not afraid of the deluge
I slid in the grass
and I danced with you
and we (all of us) will remember the streams of water
and the lightning who didn't hide
under he eves, are lovers forever
of rain.
It was muddy
and the grass was slick
and Josh (who's name I didn't change)
smiled and slid with his boots pointing outward
we giggled
and tittered
It was the moment I saw
the power of lightning up close
and the last hour of my childhood
I was at school that day
and %90 of the campus hid
under the welcoming eves
while the "rest of us"
ran and coughed
and laughed and shouted
and screamed
and belittled their
general cowardice
the mud made for good
running and falling
and that tree was split
right in half by the storm
and I could see
the fear it made poeple feel
what an exhilarating day....
and I fell on Josh and on everybody
and we were a tangeled mess of
childhood dreams and the reflections
of water on skin.

When I was a beatnik

When I was a beatnik

When I was a beatnik

(and it was something like 50 years too late)

I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day

And read Allen Ginsberg under a darkening

Dream

My thoughts about America

Were still American

(and they still are)

But the smell of those carcinogens

And the smoke and the taste of that bitter

Tobacco

Was senseless

And poised

I bled one time

My hand caught up

With a broken dish

My temper made the dish break

12 stitches and chatting merrily

With the man who’s putting needles

In the wound

 and puked

Every day for eight years

(thanks Goddess Be to Lithium)

I say that sarcastically

But with the radiant truth

In my soul

That knows my cats

Needed a beatnik to feed them

I did not so much go on the road

And womanize

As sit on my porch

Under the sun and the braches

Of the purple potato plant

That grew by the door

And I fed it carcinogens

By the bucketful

And read and muttered to myself

While the voices in my mind chattered

Mystically fervent

I tried to be a Beatnik

I felt I indentified

With Kerouac’s

Disaffection

And sense of rejection

And so like he drank himself to death

I smoked till I got asthma    

  

Lament (about the Earth)

Lament (about the Earth)

…so the news is predicting “rivers of Rain”

And I saw the thing about global warming

That says we are all doomed in 100 years…

I still go about in car, eat meat and forget to recycle

Sometimes I think every drop in the bucket

Counts

Sometimes not

Like when every drop is ignoring

It’s role as a collective wave

Like Ann Ryand hates “collectivism”

(and I have never read Ann Ryand)

But still I wonder what is a group

If not a collective?

Where power comes from

Is not my problem

I can exist knowing

The Earth will die

But not knowing

The sky will Die

If it stops raining

What then?

Will future generations forgive

My need for convenience?

In spite of their collective sorrow

I insist on going about in a car…

If hate were just a word

I would say that we hate the Earth

Otherwise

Why are we committing ‘Earth Murder”?

Why is the planet being drained

Of it’s blood and brains and soul

All for the auspices of industry\

Yet that amounts to carts

Power and piles and piles of

Landfill

If garbage is all we create

Out of forests and rocks

And “resources”

Then we truly are like rats that

Innovate towards our own

Destruction

(not that I don’t like people, I like rats too)

But it’s a shame to think that our civilized

World boils down

To the sun beating on a desert

That goes from pole to pole
and “all the things we are” keeps playing

On a megaphone in the distant desert

Heat, yet what we are breaks down

And returns to dust

Every which way you look

At this

There is no arrival at a world

That is better than the one behind us

Because we have wagered our future

For a ride in the car.