Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

grayer matters

there are these huge chunks of meaning
that don't exist in my childhood
great empty honking areas that float like pills
through paper thin mirrors of neon signs far off
where headlights bore holes in them
there in my first false memories
the little girls that took their clothes
off on the hills where we could see the upside down sky
in our birthday suits, the second one came first, the naked girls
on the hill overlooking the mercury sea in the dancing distance
we were three sincere kids in nature looking good
I remember those scenes better then ones in Bibles
television only seems like a gray blinking thing in
a dingy lighted room that came later

then I see days roll by like film or dice there are pink deserts
and yellow turning pages like waves lapping on a desolate beach
like a line of poetry by Keats or Shelley
and burning lamps between dark ages and rainbow lightning
I can see soft colors of jelly on crusts of wonder bread toast
I see highways reaching into purple mountains and layers
of grungy air that came later the orange trees still seem
huge and the oranges now seem to have been like UFO's

then the school opened its vulture beak and slammed me
into dark booths of pornography and Auto de fe's of cheap
paperback teenage idols lounging around in Beatnik dens
or driving around town looking for a mythological whore
I can still sniff the forest edge of the first sweet thing I fingered
smell the lost paradise puke in the corner and dangerous thoughts
that spend dimes on evil candy bars and quarters on angry pinball
I prayed on my beat knees and then went out and played invented
games with bottle caps or baseball cards and comic books flapping

the church spit me out like a cartoon devil or a peach pit
I was not welcome in the tree fort club house of Daddy hellfire
I had prayed too much for the cutie in math class to open her legs
wider under the desk of soda fountain gods and uniformity
those wild child teen nights dancing drunk under drunker stars
those cherry popping shooting stars that double dare cigarette kiss
that female shape moving in the shadows and breeze in magic trees
my youthful mind crying in the silver dappled rain of true intoxication
the tipsy moon sank its fangs into the whiskey ride of her nasty fun flesh
oh we became naked again but not before poetry ripped our innocence

before Keats and Shelley released pale perfumes of innocent justice, just us
after Kerouac drove down our rebel cool roads and gypped the jive jack off
after Rimbaud's forbidden floods of our most hidden secrets torn asunder
before Bukowski's first beer in the morning and the first boo line types itself
before those child memories stood on that hill and looked deep into nude now
before the wide brimming with spring fields opened their butterfly
arms and embraced our tears of silent brilliant joy fountains wonder