It is the time for choleric filial
piety and organ donors
to cash their checks.
It is time for pipers to be paid
in crackerjack prizes,
fake tattoos and miniature
Chinese fingercuffs.
A generation without a Beat
to lead it into tomorrow,
trail-blaze paths with wheat threshers
and napalm.
A generation without a poet to crucify,
only celebrities who don’t scream
unless you pay cash up front.
We are in the times
you envisioned, nightmare.
Times when poetry would be forgotten,
when Jazz would become a lost art, and
forms of shadows dance
on the back walls of libraries
before they are decommissioned.
The new poet stands alone in the desert
with his peyote trip worn off,
with no more sorrows or fuck-puppets
to write about anymore.
The black sounds you heard
evade him;
they know better.
Like Noah, we few will wait for a sign.
A sign that it’s safe to touch
a solid earth of hot beatitudes.
I can now speak fluent Japanese
and I have taught the children
how to speak Beat.
When a pelican carries me a chicken bone
engraved with Sanskrit,
detailing the perfect recipe
for oatmeal cookies,
I will know to head to North Beach
and find you.
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