Frederica Hall Arts

Valentine to Allen Ginsberg

 To Allen Ginsberg

 

I kissed you, Allen, 

when I was living on 112 and Broadway

Working late one night, at the west end tea room,

Where the young lords and the Panthers gathered

to discuss  the tactics 

of the eyes and ears and the teeth of the beast

 as it twists each against each to the Desecration for all 

 then and now, the old  dog still uses that same old trick 

 

It was a really a good night,

 you had to call loud to get through the crowd 

I got the gig with the help of my sister, 

 you might have met her by now, 

She taught me a trick, enabling you to move through the crowd

with five maybe six double full beers

held one-handed above your head.

It's simple, just whistle,  like an ambulance,

it really gets people to step aside.

Well, it was at the end, of one of those kinds of nights

Whistling and side stepping up to the service bar, 

Where Guru  bartender  John told me' that you,

were hold up along the north side of the bar 

in a booth facing east.

 

That night I had, a jesters tear falling from my left eye,

painted in greens and blues. 

my hair in Celtic shamanic braids,

and wearing something  deep dark and in style,

feeling expansive, young and old,

I went straight around the long circle bar

so l could come in from the east

swoop by and plant a big one on your harry cheek 

 Thinking of you takes me,

takes me a distance, 

                               

To the psychedelic village and all her fine people 

All along Bleecker & MacDougal streets with the sidewalks cafe's 

above and below, like the cafe basement

where I danced and Dave Von wailed his epic songs 

Upstares at street level the obscure little closet shop

where the inspired artist made scribble portraits.    

All around  the rhythm and beat and rumbling

from down under the streets

leading up to, the cement scraping the sky.

In those times millions would gather together.

Their demands changed the world with singing,

loud into the sky and laying down in front

of the temporal power of politicians and rulers,

where the dark lights dimming the world

was hidden from our hopeful waiting to see the dawn

 While in a back ally, on a brownstone  roof,  a stone Madonna looked down,

as my psychedelic  teachers,  left their mortar grottos headed out west

on the path of a rattlesnake venom that had an answer to the riddle

 

I wasn't looking back 

As I approached, bar tray held low and tight to my side.

Spotted your eyes right away,

you were watching Broadway out the doors  where the people enter in,

 I was impressed by your size, wondering, what I courted, to be so rude 

was it your fame, or your wisdom, or just plane wonderment pulling me  around that old circle bar to come in for the ambush,

Or was I  hoping to leave something of my future

as the red tail does in our dream times. 

 

I was bold from getting my teaching in the streets and on the fringe 

why I even remember the deep significant

dust in a corner of my block.

under the great looming towers and the alien street light moons

and the moment of joy of realization  how the Macro-microcosm

fit into each other 

To me, and a horde of others you were something,

something  inspiring and flying free

Your aura glistening with the magic of the quenched ego

knowing its ignorance while basking all the same in notoriety.

  Surprised me with the sounding of sonar inward

to distance madness and a bit of acrid fear,

emanating into the diminishing spaces between us 

 

 I  look into the footprints of this long cold trail,

and see you thriving, in the visions of the belly of the beast, 

Comfortably, surfing the acid waves of the peristaltic rhythms.

delighting, in the parasites seething dance

moving through the fleshy walls of the big apple

 There you were, ice fishing in the content breezes of a city summer 

with the jut box wailing a lullaby song of Bob and Jonny.

Just fishing through the contents

of the beast's last meal of crying children's dream.

Hooking up the fragments of the super unconscious. to dance

in your delightful articulate embrace.

Bringing forth offspring of joy and dread wisdom

and maybe some grace.

leading away from this den of oblivion.

 

?Was it this moment? that helped propel me

like some homeopathic remedy.

an insignificant kiss on the cheek,

not unlike the kiss before the peace parley,

Or did Judas not kiss his friend before a seaming end.

Appareling as it seemed, it propels me to dance into the

catatonic chaotic wordlessness.

 on the way to another side of the theMultibrot set 

all the while thinking ambush,

as my steps lead up to your table

and into your eyes, with riddles or questions 

or a statement, I forget which words broke through, 

too fast to be ...answered  

'I just want to kiss you'' I said 

and then as the sound settled in your inner ear,

 I did 

 My mouth without lipstick came hollow

up to your hairy protected cheek, 

 silent unknowing wailing  in the touch

and I did. 

 

 

 

Now down through the wormhole of seeming distance and

time, finding myself here, on this side of that snake's trail,

looking back with only light fractals between us 

ya know, I can talk to you, any time now,

Tell you how  here in the west, the barber wires being pulled up

  to make room for sprawling urban expansion.

( not so far from the stench of you know who ),

They even built a replica of one of the oldest volcanoes

on the continent. The very one  that pulled this land out

of the waters  billions of years ago,

and they built a village around it and called it 'Flintstones ' 

out on the highway to the grand canyon 

Oblivion is still, our dominant  act 

From the platform of the current political giant

calling for a war, titled; The Last War,

to the small tip of the capitalistic tail,

entice'n us to re-cre-ate our desires 

Through the same old deceptions,

when enough is never enough 

 

Even here, they are cutting  new trails of desecration 

 in and on, this only mountain in more than a thousand miles  

that keeps the cycle of life alive,

plotting the deception far and wide  right now as we stand

at her feet entangled

with our competitive egos  fiddling  for  

the downward spiraling capitalistic feeding frenzy

plotting to rip up new minds, supplying the bate,

for the gratification of our insatiable consuming 

of fashion and  recreation

 

Allen, I believe  you  understand  the grave significance

of all  ancient  legends of our mountain of male and female

pollen  the sacred doorway for the sky beings 

 ancient writings in the stone and on the bones

 and the trees rolled into newspaper 

 as well as all the scientific understandings  of how 

 the delicate life supporting balance that this world maintains, 

its interconectedv dirversity 

                                                                    

And maybe Allen,  from your point of view

you can see how it all connects up

to  the great electric-magnetic flow of molecules 

held together by the dream of the dense gravity,

of the true people's prayers

And how it's like dominoes, lined up across the earth,

and then tipping over at  both ends

creating a change reaction headed for the center 

I don't know which will come first 

the loss of the environment or the last war. 

or isn't that the same thing, like the elders, say;

'it really is all connected' 

 Anyway, Allen, if you were here, now,

with those pentagrams and hexagrams on the soles of your shoes,

and that light of the Imbolic fire warming the kabbalistic cauldron

at the gates of Annwn where the Tree Igdrasil sways in cosmic winds  

leaving trails of blessings 

everywhere 

Allen  if you could be here now 

I know you would  sing a song 

you would sing a song that would revive  

all of our deaf apathetic catatonic confused

              selves             

 

 

 

 

 fh 2001