"history is a lie and time is a whore" -- Jack Micheline
We were children in the cold war malaise
beyond the paradise abandoning all,
even as a non-materialistic idealism
lifted our toy boats to skim lunar oceans
& the earth homes raged with war fire.
"there is AMERICA THE HOME OF THE VOID"
wrote d.a. levy on cusps of karmic weed,
but we strode like little adams & eves
through verdant city parks to demonstrate
new democratic hearts burgeoning,
as if defending the U.S. was our lot
only -- a special species by far -- still
living off the illusions of those before us.
The boom of great industry resisted
hypocritical society's need to denigrate.
How our parents soon knew grace ending
for every action demanding true belief
to restore what bled the sanctity of
stripped prairie lands and dustbowl ires,
what waited for renewal's seeding plan.
Then history opened minds time shut
with panacea downers as payback
for those who came marching Home
from protest marches or armies of war --
& now where are your remains years
later (after we comb gray dust cinders
from the non-believer's eyes), Earth Mother --
festering in a dying air's homeless "VOID."
Michelangelo's Moses
Embedded in obsidian rainbows
scintillant wings hung
from His nature's
invisible habit:
a cloaked air
only gods of marble
bore
America the Beautiful
The buzz that went out of the firmament
becomes exiled pieces of a dust storm.
Brambles of jive cut the fine-hued ground
garlanded with leaves cast adrift
by all fallen vibes.
Chord swoons tackle your bones too.
Out there in the world,
life must have its deceits, your brother said.
We listened to cool Charlie Parker
& all that Coltrane jazz
in his N.C.O. room, escaping "militarism"
as the ultimate downer movement.
But you (being successful
at blowing white-bop to some ghetto suburb)
knew better than us,
though later your demise found headlines
to slip like cast-off threads
into our emporium of private sounds.
Cold nites take the music
of vanished impersonators from us.
Yet we still drink to those times
when riffs clung to the ceilings of dream,
& downbeat blues gave our minds
freedom from olive drab mornings
as blue notes clustered in ambrosia
the mind's tongue tasted
a season of euphoria
we wondered about, like acolytes
tormented in sullenness
