Perry Thompson - Three Poems

I see you in the proud church weather
trying on summer's tattoo

& I know you have two secret nipples under
your blouse and you water them every day

but be careful

one night while you're in deep summer dreams
love may curl like a grasshopper's tongue

around your bed and steal your nipples
from their places thinking they are dark

& watery rubies

In the fever that is rising
(hot sun on blooms),
psalms like petals blister.
Here's the blank face of benediction.

In the tone that is rising
(whole note scale in grey walls),
scandals clatter on brick.
Here's the dark music of wine and bread.

In the loud voice of the sunrise
(tongue in the moring bell),
rough clothes abrade the skin.
Here's the phrase muttered again and again.

In the heat that is rising
(bleak blessing on the hour's head),
abstinence and desire join in the pale frame.
Here's the day-long feast of emptiness.

In the fever that is cooling
(red sun on green leaves),
empty men at roses bend.
Here's falsity like a thorn on the brow.

(written the day before Allen Ginsberg's death)


They're burnin' off now -- the dirt scag
machine gun narcotics I been suckin' down
for thirty-five years -- and the patient is hittin'
a all-time low.

I got freight train head
running full gear on red hot tracks down
the rail line of the ole spiney spine and those
spider-willies under the skinny skin, cut 'em
thin to win and I want some more shit
more than I want my woman or to go on suckin' air.
And it's gonna get worse and I Goddamn well know it.

Been tryin' to quit, playing Dylan and Lennon over and over,
tryin' to get back to when I was young,
tellin' myself anything to keep from makin' that call.
I'm walkin' the floor and shoutin' Ginsberg from memory
and poundin' my fists in my eyes.

Come on down here you baggy pants lotto big city asshole!
Come on down you young punk and see how life is!
Get pearl jammed up in the borrowed hallways of capitalism
then say fuck it to that
and jump back from the boardrooms of the overhip dollar,
start on the lifetime adventure of mighty fine love.  Just like me.
I thought it was a gas, thought it was The Muse, thought
it was everything but what it was.   I's havin' fun.

Slowin' down now,  gettin' real sick.  Make the call or die is what
my brain screams.  I say look at these old hands and the wrinkles
on my face and the old-man's hair.  I'm undesirable, gone but
somehow still here.  Been Alicia Silverstoned!  I'm ugly history.

But oh my friends I was graceful in my day, burnin' torch head
like some crazy bearded Statue Of Liberty.  I burned and
burned and I'm blazin' this trail for you, you young fuckheads who
know every Goddamn thing in the bush-beck world.  Look here!  Look here!
Look here!  Let my death be your roadmap!