Who is left to doubt the cold insistence of Americas trek
into the next millennium;
                          binge and purge
                          binge and purge
                          binge and purge
until your bones are spit out and left to dry in a moon
that is red as the sun they’ll bury you under;
                                               no longer thirsty
for the dragons blood that forms puddles in the purple sky 
above New York, that drips like a forgotten melody
or new song whose content has not been revealed.

And if the words refused to speak
would you raise your voice in triumph, to help us sing
that psalm; 
             or would the sound only ring with hollow solace,
no truth in the pictures that tell the tale;
             or would you simply laugh: 

Lying face up on a green rock that is surrounded 
by a confederacy of imitators, blurted in repentance or to concur the deafening silence
for a time, like an ocean for the shore; washing up on the west coast,
in a monastery or the tip of that peninsula they call India. 
                                                             Is there anywhere you can go
that you’d truly be unknown, rising ragged and tired to dance
across the graves of our fathers and children,
in a joyous defiance of your mother
and all the other women,
                         who bore you
and left you wondering;
                         Was it a right
or left we made outside the Haight, trying to recapture
the cryptic visions you found under an alter in Wales, almost as vibrant,
as the soft English weather until the acid wore off and you were
Manhattan bound;
                 before the rolled that wagon in
to take you to a far away borough where you can hang
with Neal + Jack; all the poets, spirits and shaman,
you aspired to be: 
                   selfish as your selfless,
freak, founder, prophet and stranger;
as much athe child as annd the old man:.

Allen Ginsberg,  Beat poet,  is dead
                                     at least that’s what the paper said;
in a rush and a flash he was off to the cool and dark
with only his words left to explain
                                     what it really means
to be an American,  taking pen into dirty hand,
tired as it counts out memories;
while wading carefully through the swelling humidity of April.

Some Other Kind Of Index