You Poet

You Poet

You poet of unremembered night who are also the soul, the breeze, the tumbling of lights from railroad steel to bop licks are gone.

You poet of coronets, blowing hard and soft into a night heavy with heat or supple with rain and mud-splattered shoes are gone.

You poet of drunken yells, bells and sleepless spells of crying out loud for the sheer solace of unprovoked joy and love are gone.

You poet of shivering thighs, slapping holy pubic hair to moan in the gently rolling breasts of ceaseless sighs are gone.

You poet with visions of the snake and the ghosts of bums hurrying through lands of memory, words, boasts, stories, songs and children are gone.

You poet giving voice to the unknown distractions of moving moving, never stopping to find hypnosis in television sets and tax returns and bonds of money and gore are gone.

You poet of ghostly horses, saints and cons, sweet snatches, St Teresa bums, mumbling Dharma chanting woodsman poets, beatific dogs and movement are gone.

You poet I dream of in wild longings of desperate kisses I never had, the friends I never yelled “Fuck You” at, the madman who’s always fading from my memory, the song I should’ve followed to an end, the preacher I never flung a book at, the chronicler of a nation of the mind where all freedom resides in words, thoughts, desire and despair, but kindness too, are gone.

You poet, wizard of words, typing lines of distilled riffs cutting through sky blue domes and forgotten desolate tomes are gone.

Ah woe.

- For Jack Kerouac, New Delhi, September 12, 2008