Remembering Ginsberg

who howled through just about everybody's idea of the real weirdo poet
given enough time and eventually under his dynamo words

who kept growing on us scolding about us all the illuminated while or
sometimes even when he didn't we still thought you cool ol' queer
.Jew anyway contemplating prophecy and apocalyptic celebration

who bared his comparably Walt-wide soul in incautious combustible
mixtures across the tops of our jazz-jived brains inducing Cool and
his tempo of Madman Blake dooming the whole beautiful universe

who had more odd jobs than the American dream still has nightmares to ride
herd on or we'd then ever heard four fucking letter words for
as repeatedly whenever he'd get into our pubic beards with his fire

who made fine old fun as if he could not be responsible for the effects of our
psychiatric misbehaviors he was beating up on or poking holes into
to reach roots to better check on what best amounts of husbandry
.he could pour down to muck up or stimulate oracular irritation

who yacketayaked screaming warnings like a jugged jeremiah anarchist
smiling jesus almighty antichrist and zen master debater balled
and bald too talking self-conscious all about bold rhythm and meter

who to remove our contaminated sex, soup, poetry, Eisenhower and all later
latter lonelinesses, or commitments to the horror of sodding sad war
chanting himself into harsh melancholy reminderings

who for all transient suffering sang kaddish and praise of hazards to humans
and all sexy life here including gnarled trees and the torsos of boys
or other fruited delicacies such as life itself

who died obeying all the laws about death and the poet's still ownership
of the universe he loved with all the litany of praise he's now on his
way to that countdown to eternity, howling.

~

about the photo:
Attached a road picture taken from a taxi ride to Zhengzhou, this city
that I had used only as a transit point, reaching its train or bus stations
and then moving on. This time though, it was Zhengzhou proper.
But only to shop - to roam its malls, it was like a surrender to materialism
after all the temples and the Buddhas everywhere.
- Smitha Murthy

~

words: Ed Higgins, Oregon (poetry page)
photo: Smitha Murthy, India