Poetry

[Sergeant Rock]

JEAN TWENTY-NINE/SONNET SIXTEEN
      (Grateful Dead, Ohio University, November 23rd 1968)

Saint Stephen boogie blues psychedelic
eleven in the morning dew and the other
one turn on the love light of the hippie chick
dancing her roommate: fluid they flower,
blonde on blonde, stoned, zoned-together, tumble.
I watch--feel their heat--jam! twist in a trance,
tonight sexual barriers crumble:
we, the grateful living, sweat, fuck, and dance!

Death don't have no mercy: we groove light, loose,
in the zone ... Jerry's silvery guitar
notes cascade down new potato caboose
and fly toward cosmic consequence: dark star.
". . .little schoolgirl," wails Pigpen, "without a warnin'
you broke my heart...you know I need you darlin'. . ."

[Spotted Horses]

Too bad Schoenberg isn't around anymore, he could set them to music.

[Sergeant Rock]

CAT ONE      

I am the color of striped flame
My eyes glow of setting sun
      
and devil and seductress
share My silent stare
penetrating your very thoughts
      
and far beyond
      
I dance an inward dance
waltz with the moon
      
and stars remember My hunts



CAT TWO

the Cat was Calico

She did a

slow
      
s l o w...
      
motion

yawn
and stretch
      
yawn and stretch
      
and after a doubt
or two
      
accepted my hand
like an empress her crown

[Sergeant Rock]

THE D MINOR, THIRD VERSION, NOWAK

for David "Pete" Petersen

Conducting the Cleveland, Aldo Ceccato, baton
like a sword, was charging his way through the finale
of Bruckner's symphonic cathedral to Wagner
like it was the gallop from Rossini's Tell

(Latin temperament irrepressible, allowing
no monumental peasant piety nor Ländler lope)
when I noticed the Afro among the three thousand
palefaces in attendance at Severance:

as the coda approached, that majestic moment
when trumpet theme returns for a major recycling,
the white woman beside him tapped his shoulder,
alerting. He tensed forward, straining to hear,

fanfares rallentando and...wholly Hallelujah!!!
Cleveland explodes!
braying horns, tuba and trombones erupting,
trumpets machine-gunning triplets.

I was showered in brass shrapnel, fifths,
goose bumps; a silly grin spreading. And
black and white
beamed enormously at each other

as he shook his head yes! O yes! up and down,
up and down, yes! and yes! And yes,
I thought amazed, this ain't Miles or Marvin,
stereotypes burning away in Brucknerian blaze.

Yes. . .make color and culture irrelevant,
build your Gothic structure of sound,
hurl your themes toward heaven like spires
and stride, augmented, through the macrocosm, Anton: sainted!

And let your majors and minors linger in my mind...

[Sergeant Rock]

This is a poem about a guy I knew while stationed on the DMZ in Korea, Nov 1969-Oct 1970.

CHUCK
   
Chuck looks like a caricature of Paul Newman:
amazing resemblance but everything (lips eyes nose length)
just way too much. Still,
he claims to get all the chicks in Nebraska
and I can see why.
I'm a bit envious of his commanding height and looks
(I'd murder for those eyes).
But he's celibate here, never goes crackin'
never jumps the back of the deuce'n'half to ride horny
into the vill' with the rest of us: he claims it's the smell,
open sewers, water buffalos sharing village space
the low-tide stench of the Imjin,
and the kim chee breath of the lithesome dolls
who dance the clubs with slender limbs
all elbows and knees, jet hair and eyes:
ravishing raven girls not yet eighteen--most;
their painted lips and pouty mouths
reeking of rotting cabbage, onion, garlic; clover gum.
The smell makes me hungry now that I'm addicted to
the local cuisine--the local toys.

Korea is real, not shrink-wrapped clean and odor free
like "The World" Chuck wants to return to so desperately.
He has (statistically) half a century left
but I wouldn't bet he'll be around
to witness tomorrow's flaming sunrise:
He's the Colonel's driver
and sits daily exposed in an open jeep,
cruising the Zone within easy sniper range.
Concerned, I enlist Robert Herrick's help
and together we try to inject some reality
into Chuck's situation with a poetic truth:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...

It doesn't work (in this century poetry never does).

Every day he drives towards his mortality
vainly vest'd and hopelessly helmet'd
against smooth or jagged metal penetration while:
north across the barrier Korean gunners aim and track
awaiting an inscrutable political decision to squeeze.

Every night he goes to bed alone
in our cold tin hooch, perversely dreaming of Kinney Shoes
and his future as assistant manager while:
south across the river Korean china dolls fully awake
dream of Hollywood stars--and settle for me.