counter culture – poems 2 die for

OUR MUSIC

The aliens are, coming here
rushing head-over-heels
faster
than a guitar riff
because they love
our music

speakers blaring Zeppelin
and Hendrix
smashing the peace as
they hurtle through
the galaxy

reminding those
old enough to remember air cavalry choppers
colonizing the skies
of Vietnam

the aliens are coming here
now all the critical questions
of survival
relate to the possibility
of jam sessions

and whether our human
overlords
will let them land and
pluck and strum

or pull
the plug

desperate to
shut them out

POEM ANTI-CLOCKWISE

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MONKEY BUSINESS

’68, year of the Monkey
what if there were
no Space Odyssey

no Moonwatcher to watch
the students of the Sorbonne
turn France
upside-down

overhead, somehow lost
in the inaccessible recesses
Overlook labyrinth
of HAL’S digital memory,

there is no
continuity error in space
no ninety degree offset
in every planetary alignment

no fabulous match cut,
best there
has ever been

and incredible other
incredible leap by
the Kubrick imagination

Star Child spawned of monolith
floating back
from Jupiter down to
our so shabby planet

to tell us
that the cosmos is our
mirror and our future

written
as if on a screen by
end of
the journey, last self
our evolution

pure promise of our becoming
true
immaculate machine

RELEASE

here I am
at Woodstock 69

my head exploding in the moment
did not think things
could change out
of all proportion

Carlos Santana standing there
wrestling with the demons
in his guitar
ripping out my heart
serving it back to me shredded,
dripping with
Lysergic acid

did not figure he could
mellow so
smooth

and the end of Vietnam
lead to everything headed
in the wrong
direction

and here we are now
having lomg said our
goodbyes to
a raw music of ecstasy
of transformative connection

music now
filtered and distilled

served
in a box

box we would ask you politely
not to think outside of

ever dream
that soul, spirit, body
whatsoever
altogether

we can agree to release

TOSH

I wrote a poem
in which Christopher
Columbus
steps ashore
and is
captured
by a reggae band

sent back to Spain
to convert the Catholic
Churcb
to the wisdom
of Jah

and Charles Bukowski
Jim Morrison, Jimi
Hendrix and
the Doors

managed to slip aboard

strangely, their
preferred destination
was the siave port
of Liverpool

ARTISAN BAND

I try to sniff out
poetry anywhere
and everywhere

omce I thought
a few flashes in
a band on the Reeperbahn
four working class guys
irreverent, cheeky,
full of irrepressible
young life

watched them
began to get excited, thought
I saw, felt poetry there

but they
were just getting better
tighter
practice making perfect
as is the way with bands

some of their lyrucs
and harmonies suggesting
promise, revelation of something

a capturing of the heart
of rock
and roll

but I must have been mistaken
projecting my hopes upon them

tough business, hope
they make it
my artisan band

ONE AND ONLY

imagine
you are one
moment
naked in
the street
in Hamburg

the one before
in Strawberry Fields
with Yoko

the next
being introduced to
Paul

the next being blown
away by a jealous soul
with a snub-
nosed special

imagine a
world become
so non-linear

everything you are and were
revolving forever on a carousel

imagine that
Mr Sergeant Pepper’s
one and
only Billy Shears

LIKE A

LIKE A

was
light years ahead

and now
I am dead

soul free to roam
in that dark space

ghost
music only

ghost poetry

voices, songs

Ginsberg, McGough, Henri,
Patten,
Ferlinghetti, Corso,

the Beatles,
Hendrix, Cream

and the Rolling Stones

PROFESSOR SUGAR CUBE

PROFESSOR SUGAR CUBE

wanted to
dissolve all boundaries
between
self and cosmos, writer
and word

sucked that juice out
instantly
on the road to
strangest territory

such a dark, dark terminal
sweetness

    and multiple many-track
dimensions trapped within the
confines
        of that cube