Linda Lerner

 

FAREWELL TO A DOWNTRODDEN SAINT

—2/27/98

don’t much like this age
hankering after puritan taboos
holy/holier than thou
about everything
hail & brimstone Cotton Mathers
running my city, country
anything alive, x-rated
holy art not exempt either...

walk down any street & see
people huddled in doorways sneaking
a drag, scared criminal by
new morality: in the name of health, family
someone killed, a building blown up;
doesn’t matter what we call it now...

nabbed for jay walking
refusing to keep within the lines
overstepping like a child who
doesn’t see a line
crayoned red over a coloring book picture
& called into the principal’s office
to explain what i couldn’t
can’t still...breathe between lines
i don’t see:   do not step
on the grass   dance on the grass
like a child doesn’t know
how to put herself in
a prison, child with young
or old skin who knows in
the scheme of things/no scheme:

refusing today to join the huffing pack
chasing down the POET’S death
with their writing tools,
i’ve taken this crazy detour,
will not even write his name
             in defiance
             in deference

i bump into the POET
seated in a crummy luncheonette
in my poem, coffee & a bagel
with a smear of cream cheese
out of his Bronx boyhood,
that old floppy hat he wore in
San Francisco, day i met him
and we spent together;

bumming a cigarette, he winks at me
smiling flowers & children
all over my poem
wherever he sees gray,
making a toast:
       to life
       to life

for “a well travelled ghost:” no regrets

You can shut down   cut off
not ever think about the Nam again
what came before:  Gillespie at the Vanguard
or afterwards:   way you loved to play language
made your muted blues  speak
”a joyful noise...”
you can forget all that   but
something always yanks you back:
to me:   to get you back

as in a jazz improv when
forced off-note wailing   too soon
certain in the isn’t    can’t be
there is / was   more;
all the beside-the-point excuses
that mattered...your legal woman   kids
addiction obligations....really don’t

when it comes to saving a soul:
what this poem is about
having no regrets   that extra breath:
& why i tried so hard to get you back

the night David Amram

swerved off Kerouac’s road
into world trade center Borders’ books
& began pulling the daisy
off a keyboard    from instruments he
grabbed out of a bag
he pulled the forgotten daisy
of America:   in this final year
of the century   in its urgent need
he yanked the invisible daisy of every
dead spirit who happened by
every citizen of the dollar bill
anti-first amendment church goer
pulled with his eyes his voice his fingers
Miles   Parker  be boppin’ Ginsberg / Kerouac sound
so deep inside they didn’t
know when the dharma ghosts rose up in them
to fight censorship / oppression
as half a century ago
as now again they must
only that it did   in their gut / knew
the night Amram
pulled my daisy    pulled everyone’s
in Giuliani-town    all those towns
he traveled to across America:
to kill death among the living
remind us   remind us
of the spirit to live by

© by Linda Lerner