Don’t talk of gender
or of sex.
Don’t talk it out
at all events.
Don’t talk of him.
Don’t talk of me.
Don’t stand
for masculinity.
Don’t talk ideas.
Don’t ask for proof.
Don’t be so brash
to ask for truth.
Don’t talk of drugs
or family.
Just bark the word,
“Equality!”
Don’t talk free speech
or liberty.
Just bark the word,
“Diversity!”
Don’t talk about
South Africa.
You shut your mouth!
Don’t act bizarre.
Don’t talk about
the media
or Marxist
academia.
Don’t think it through.
Don’t be that chump.
Just sing along
to “I hate Trump!”
Just do what you’re
supposed to do.
You know the drill.
There is no you.
There is no God.
There was no Fall.
In fact, you’d best
not talk at all.
You sang the body electric.
We sing the body sinful.
O graybeard, O Walt,
to talk of the white-blow and delirious juice,
the jets of love hot and enormous,
the woman and man,
would at one time cause storm,
now it causes politics.
O father of America, O poet of the body,
how would you observe us?
We who’ve turned flesh to words
and words to wars between
woman and man, between
body and soul, between
history and culture, between
sight and desire.
O Walt, O song of the fires and rains,
the black and the white,
the organ and spirit,
what flag would you raise in the culture war?
I’d think the flag of a Taoist Americana;
a lucid flag
—no, a translucent towel of a Taoist Americana
you’d set upon the sands of the Golden State
to get brown on;
sunbathing, naked, your beard, your masculinity,
the air, the animals, the women and men
singing the body electric
and soul electric
whilst beyond the world destroys itself
with words
and politics.
O graybeard, O Whitman,
uniting the states of being
in our world of severance.
The world would likely reject you now
with that beard and masculinity,
your body electric,
your body alive
and unapologetically free,
in brazen love-grip with a soul in love with life.
O Walt, O rugged individual,
accountable as much in love as in hatred,
loving love as much as hating hatred.
O wind and rain and surf and saliva,
O sun-bleached body,
O woman, O man, O human soul,
O joy of love-grip and the juices of life.
Your redwood, Walt,
your moose.
Your deserts, your canyons, Walt,
as we all embark on that numinous path
that none can wander for us.
We were up in the freezing hills,
warm in our little room,
as the morning stumbled in.
You were at the window.
A sparkle of light came
falling across your breasts.
There you stood,
aflame in panties and womanhood,
soon to return to me.
There are countless men
—all compete for bits of light,
all are forgotten,
all drag some chain or other.
But as you stood before me
—the morning fallen across your breasts—
I recalled that, now and then, a man will catch a break
and the chains won’t feel so heavy,
like they’re not
even there
at all.
I was you
and you were me
and that’s the way we wrapped ourselves in love
—our silken case
that hatched a memory
flying back to me from time to time.
Though love did not survive,
it didn’t die
but grew the wings of
something else I need not understand
that flies to me from time to time
to reassure, to let me know it never died
then sails away,
thanking me, I’m sure, for having let it go.
America,
I miss you
though I’ve not yet left.
America,
Venice Beach beneath
a burning, blasting sun.
My burning heart for you,
America.
How long can you withstand?
America,
buses and deserts
and,
somewhere,
coyotes…
America,
Oklahoma, suburbs
and questions, America.
Fears for you
in my churning gut.
America,
just how
will they loot your legacy?
America,
Texas and longhorns
and NFL with pizza.
Jazz and sweat
in New Orleans
and dirty secrets
of a city
that sweats on a port.
America,
so confidant.
I fear for you.
The mob attacks
the shining city upon a hill.
They want to clean you out.
They need to clean their rooms.
America,
the mirror in our rooms
reflecting the image
we see in ourselves.
America,
you fought the Crown
then fought yourself.
Warrior, liberator
in dark nights of the soul,
you’re Booker T.,
you’re General Patton.
Are you on your knees,
America?
—Your history, your anthem, your children
mobbed.
America,
if you go
we go.
America,
you’re strange afflictions like CNN.
But more,
you’re founding father,
you’re proud father
coming home from work.
Enslaver but, much more,
emancipator; you’re a people
that shine a light upon a hill.
America,
you’re the stretched fabrics
of all the world has sewn
and yet remain
the best we’ve known.
My mate and I left lovers
and hit the road.
On mountaintops we worked it out.
We marched back home
ready to love our girls.
We dropped our bags and told them we’d commit.
They dropped their eyes and turned away
and said they needed space.
Funny, really; that’d always been my line.
It made sense.
Love has a left and a right
but little else.
But oh how we dance:
She in, me out,
me in, she out,
around and around the pillar of love
that ceases to exist
once we take our eyes off our lover
and onto the pillar of love.
We amble by back roads
searching for the corpse of god,
flail down the rabbit holes,
try instructions but
plunge through darkness
and that’s why we love each other
for we can’t completely love each other
the way we’d like to think we can
—on this we all relate
on levels more unconscious.
So we pull away,
so the dance.
But I know she tried.
I tried too.
My mate and I came home
and the girls—well—
they gave us just what we deserved.
But it’s just the dance.
Perhaps it’s what we’d hoped for
all along.
Little sparrow in my heart,
seems as if we soon will part.
Stay inside for some time more,
though your flutters make me sore.
Little sparrow, chant your tune.
Seems as if you’re leaving soon.
Break my heart just one more day
for the girl that’s gone away.
Little sparrow, when you leave,
taking with you all I grieve,
take the ache within my chest.
Wait before you take the rest.
Leave me with the thought of her
long enough to feel it stir.
Little sparrow, then you may
take it all and fly away.
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