Song of Our Selves

(For John Lennon, Ed Sanders, Vicky Edmonds, Beaver Chief & Michael McClure.)

 

Our natural desire is to sing.

Our natural desire is to sing.

Our natural desire is to sing.

 

The roar of the Rebel Lion.

Growl of the Labrador.

Coltrane's tenor wail.

Lady Day's moan piercing

smoke, pain & smack.

 

Drip of the faucet in steel sink.

Reincarnation of Lakshmi, burning

a trail of Nag Champa fortelling

                                                                              fortunes.

 

                  Your fingers grazing

                                     the base of my spine.

 

This all gravity of human desire

hot as the noon day sun

on Venus.

 

Moving with the pressure of entropy,

the young man sings.

 

Sudden as the velocity of Indy,

teacher goddess forges new paths

through blizzards of pain

and denial of incest, and sings.

 

Up though paternal ridicule

the poet madman sings.

 

With the power of water

slice patient though rock,

tenacious as indigenous growth

pop through cracks in city skin

the song takes root and wails.

 

Our natural desire is to sing.

 

Monk's fat fingers   - no compromise -

make ivories sing. Zappa's

torrid instrumental genius

meets stratocaster strings, and sings.

Miles' muted roar, into the centuries

it sings.

 

Deny us your song - betray your soul.

Defy gravity and postpone experiments

in Buddha-hood for another spin

on the karmic wheel, but YOU WILL SING.

 

Moon rise    -    Little Sister spits ash    -

coyote steals and eats Yuma God heart,

you sing. Bullet fells a Beatle

 

yet we imagine no religion

           we Give Him Some Truth

          we Give Peace a Chance

and we sing.

 

Jails can't contain the spirit of a shaman.

The planet spins, we hear the ancient

Dreamer's Song        and we sing.

 

We fight narcotic vapors.

Breathe in polluted stench

of greed's by-product

& belch a steel guitar sermon.

Blues our alchemical urge.

Our dirge. We sing.

 

We burn in the ovens of Auschwitz

return as spirits and sing.

Meet the business end

of America's Smart Bombs

we persevere and sing.

 

Vaporized in a Nagasaki instant

yet into the generations our song is heard.

The dogs of racism are released,

we overcome and with lusty

voice we wail our

eternal song

make

ripples in the

universal pond, each tiny

wave a note in our divine number.

 

We plot in the rebel café

a new form of thinking

of being           of living.

An end to all suffering.

 

We drop the steel,

call off the revolution

begin to feel the evolution

of sentient beings, and sing.

 

Our termination of desire

manifests as fire of

the Ancient Soul unbound,

we lift off the ground

 

AND     WE     SING!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

peN#531 12:50AM

Sunday 5.10.98

@ E St S.E.