Surreal Beat
The naked lunch book cover
of some early dog-eared paper back
is staring at me. I'm hooked
first read free...
I'm sitting in a gray room
feeling time warp like a
rained on post card from
Nepal, I'm seeing gray shadows
pass before me like the voices of
the dead, somehow I mirror
this memory and trade pain
for Benzedrine words that tell me
their sorry story, this is no
meditation on emptiness, no void
this crazy beat universe pulse
shoots to the pleasure center
eternal unconscious cut ups
on the nod road to beat bliss
heroin is not a psychedelic
flower power is not opium poppies
there is a bleed through between
beat and surrealism, Philip Lamantia
is the cardinal like the red bird
of the air like Mage of the Carnelian
Order, only this happens where dreams
and everyday reality cross over the
the great green river of jazz idols
and written serpent tongue
curling around the street lamp nimbus
the sign given is scat scarab black
that as you look closely
becomes a whirl pool that opens
a gate in some Egyptian alleyway
and that creepy mummy flute music
and a movie set of the late 50's
where filming of 'Bucket of Blood'
is in full swing all those hep cats
dressed in black saying stuff like
"you are the most, and don't be a
square...man! I dig you the most"
I'm somewhere in this century
with a copy of,'Golden Sardine'
in my hip pocket, my eyes like gum balls
I'm standing outside the City Lights
books store on the sidewalk conveyer belt
looking in the Howling night front window
at the reflection and the poet fish bowl
I see myself in the future like
some neon hobo with a hula hoop halo
spinning on fire total out of control
my red gum ball eyes chewing the scene
digging on the shapeshift vortex there
for a split second I see an image in
the plate glass coming from behind me
It's Bobby Kaufman like in one of
michelle boleyn's
really gone photographs...man!
