Ghost of Sanburg

There was a minute when everything was

Novel, when we peeked parasites like the city on our backs.

The country growled a climbable distance,

Freeways and American vibed,

A place of calm illusion and hot summer gorilla,

The naked journey still righteously bleached and free among the living.

 

A time when flagellation and altars were spiked

When they meant more to us than just something from your knees.

Buddhists raked sand and bodies in the hot Fernando Valley….

 

I believed in old furniture and future

Clown skin,

Shirtless radio, reading Pynchon

And Howling Ginsberg

I feared Moloch into the ears of western corn and Carl,

Yes Carl was with us too.

 

There was a time of high-skied couch fires and railroad cabs.

Children gathering in monster clans by the nightly forests of when,

A time of delightful towers and crypts

Unattainable, but for us on the hot white microdots;

A willingness to invade,

We drove our bodies into the lakes, needles and sought the tiny spines of refugee girls.

Made beds where fathers and old residents never knew that we would be so thin and bleeding.

At morning, gathered in foggy cafés where the wretched still found bad coffee and smoked as they ate.

A time when we stayed hungry, crowned, demonized; tripe wasteland and prime for shaking.

American blends educated by the wafting degrees of nothing; everything, redolent stools in the apex of fray molecules and relishing stance.

 

There was a minute when everything collapsed under the weight of capital

And here I will admit to the new driving beast, hunger made us cave. Took away everything in pieces one by gastric guns. I look back now. Hunched over into the hills of freedom with sad eyes and know that somehow I must be ready again;

 A monstrous confusion gathering like an Omphalos stone in my shoe.

 

Where do we land when the fires have died?

When the reservoirs are all dried over save for none?

The use of needles becomes necessary. When fathers are lovely old friends.

Do we kill ourselves in vodka waiting for the sifted cushions of bliss and ignorance a la old age?

Chew teeth at the back of a run down hotel; bible in the eyelet drawer like a shower for our hopes and sins?

Not me…I am going out with the white whale and tied ritualized onto an ocean floor.

Reviews

[The Twin Arenas]

yeah yeah
hot summer gorilla
high -skied couch fires
children gathering in monster clans

nice work, man.

[The Twin Arenas]

Like when Sandburg wrote, horns are redolent here

[Perdition]

Yeah…if you can get it. Thanks W. Good ole Carl!

[The Twin Arenas]

"Chicago" is one of the best poems ever. A f*****g steak of poem.

[Perdition]

Here!
Here!~