skye

 

On the Leaving of a Leaky Lifeboat by an Autochthonous Spirit
(for Gregorio Corso, 1930-2001: "I will live and never know my death.")

I can't say I felt your cold bones shiver
—as the soul's chrysalis cracked when it departed—
beneath the weight of all the many-other thousands
with rigor-frozen legs and arms,
mortal refugees finally casting off from their
marooned berth along these sloshing shores,
heave-ho ballast hastily dumped and left behind, all those
lifeboat spirits now wandering on.

But I thought I saw something of your madcap glitter
in the spray of stellar pebbles flung in faint array
gleaming phosphorescent in the predawn heavens
and I trembled in the sudden meaning
of morning mist washing the world anew;

Your bones at rest, now, devoid of the ember
that gave them life and motion, those
vagabond footloose antics with which you
found the world such an excruciating necessary adventure,
tossed with abandon among, between,
the furious currents and lakeshore haven,
the shriek of the ayrie guardian and the
bullfrog's sonorous chorus.

Off now on another odyssey,
what alley epiphanies and cafe-scenes and
highballin' limo fine times must lie ahead for you and your
zany reunited crew of nomad rebels,
Bill and Jack and Allen (to speak of just a few);

Having kicked the ivory applecart of tyrannical values
as far as it can go
with your Sally-Ann white Florsheim-shoes metaphor
of raging wild-eyed soulful-scheming condemnations of
the uptight status-quo, seeking the deep pulse-beat rhythms
of meditative respirations as counterpoint
inspiration to
the petty arrogance and conceit of a mainstream bankrupt
corporate-culture world gone ga-ga,
whose citizens pay lip-service to the ideals of liberty and honour
while complicity forging invisible manacles in servitude to
the jealous deities of mammon;

Apprenticing as page to the retinue of the Muses,
then earning your own journeyman's card
as Master Poetics Craftsman,
having weathered the worst excesses of a vain and
arrogant post-war regime of postcolonial oppression,
distinguishing yourself as wise elder among
a rowdy outspoken rabble,
grand Daddy-O of a rebellious age of
resistance and inspiration, honorary clan elder
of a mixed-bag bunch of misfit outcast poet/artists.

And so, like the slo-mo toppling of a dynasty,
the faded breath of dustmote memories now lingers in
ancient oldgrowth forests, a tender madcap riddle
whispering in tongues
where moss-backed humps of conferring boulders
huddle in their sedentary reflections,
listening, watching, waiting,
as the long fall of grayfog drizzle settles among the
fernwood, leafduff and scattered shagbark carpet.

Where the air, suffused with low soft moans of
lightbeams' tired discharged currents,
flutters like sporespotted pages of flyblown wellworn
limited-edition poetry, newly retrieved
from obscure niches, journals rethumbed
in tribute and veneration, the rumble
of a passing whirlwind on the ridgepeaks
of literary mountains
where the mighty (tho to themselves
but humble crazy mind-saint master-fool pilgrims
of the deepnight seas and sparkly giddy days)
tumble like passing comets
into the great beyond...

© by skye