Harry a poet

[revolutionrabbit]

Once I knew a poet
he never published one book of poems
but he carried his poem around
on his face, you could see'em in that look
in his eye, the way his eyes glittered
after he read one of his poems at a local
reading,

I first met Harry at a reading on an open mic
I don't remember what his poems said, in so
many words,I can see the way his words
sounded in my mind's eye, the way they
seemed to wash over one another
like ocean waves, the way they rolled
over each other like floods of meaning
a meaning that was so deep that I could
not quite grasp, but that was the meaning
that as soon as you thought the words
held any, they eluded any conclusion
and forced you to really listen to the
cadence and the ringing between the flowers
of his relentless voice scourging and trashing
the reason we even try to find some reason
behind the torrent of days into nights, like
neon signs tumbling like dice into cities
of total darkness, his voice of voids and lights
the pouring rain of newspaper headlines, that
we drink to the bottom of the river of read wine

Harry was a wild flower that sailed the seven seas
he hung out with Bob Kaufman when poets were
kings of the village, and roamed the bars and cafes
when a copy of Rimbaud's Season in Hell could
always be found near by, and a poet would
always have a poem ready to read to the drunks
on the avenue, or the birds in the park

I knew a poet named Harry, I knew his scary poet
smile, that seemed to rise up from the ocean depths
and ride down from the grandfather spirit lightning
it shined in the Kerouac alley when he haunted
the North Beach haunts, when poetry
was still in the air like Frisco fog
I remembered the line he once uttered
after guzzling a pint of red Vermouth
"Like a trainload of drunken Indians"

[saw]

I guess you could say, some people publish poems and some people live them....

so here's to Harry.......nice ride

[the mingo]

[dadio]

Some publish too much, some not enough, other none at all. Good poem.