To Cappy
When we tired of inciting chili bean insurrection
at
Tom's Truck City,
of sprinkling havoc
in department stores (essence
of Apple Blossom from the Magic Shop)
of Sly Fox Wine cornering
in the Triumph & snow,
of hiding from Big Brother, crouching by
the dry dog food in the 7-11,
I left, thumbing a salesman's lecherous
lift, his wholesale guilt - my gain; I became
Greyhound's guest in Richmond.
In D.C. pan handling
somnambulents would
bore
the avenues but the Mustard Seed
in 1967 was haven
church traditional of hot
beans,
white bread connections for hip revolutionaries,
naive runaways, rambling rosies like myself,
and fatigued, green, renegades.
Drummer Dick preyed
like the salesman, but Louis
the albino flute player plied me to sing
jazz at Dinganee's Den - Georgetown wailed
one block from the commune where Conrad
(nuclear physicist drop-out) cooked wild
rice, nibbling his toenails à la carte.
Telling them I needed wardrobe, I returned
for you.
We became our own heroes;
President Johnson
escalated as folk would flee to Canada
his Great Society of wood worms, we
not escaping - but exploring
one another.
You, scarecrow in sunshine, and I
prepared for Broadway knowing
hallucinogens screwed up Judy Garland.
I chauffeured you piggyback in my chic
Olive Oyl skirt & your combat boots;
you wore a safari jacket, saber,
Marine Corps hair cut, long
as the months since your discharge allowed.
We took that complacent commune
with our bloody WAR lettered posters
you'd painted so carefully, I drew,
stir-fried Conrad, burned Dick -
when they collected for supper
we retreated to a
pizzeria.
We marched in DuPont Circle
with
Hell's Angels
before reconnaissance to Greenwich Village.
The New Jersey Turnpike snow worried
you at three a.m. more than me. There were some strange
rides, but mostly curious.
The guy with Fig Newtons™ in his glove compartment, a
seeker of sorts
(he kept stopping for brews
at roadside diners, while we sat outside).
Uncle Joey (doorman at Central Park West)
aided our campaign; for his wife Marie
we slept in separate rooms -
pre-marital
monkey-business
less cool than
Viet Nam.
The two gorillas in Suffolk,
whose ride we were afraid to cancel, turned
out to be most civilized primates, the countryside yielded truck driving
pussycats.
Later in Cherry Point, your comrade Carl
who re-upped without you, blue, blown
over his wandering wife, kept trying to hang
himself,
for us,
for her.
Then a night in Valdosta City Jail
and on to Dade County
which was Wallace Country
which was really Lurleen Country.
I ran the Dixie Creme Do-Nut Shop;
dodged grapefruit in dark groves
before dawn, you fished. We bought
supplies and a clock radio which alarmed
us one early morning of Robert Kennedy's
carnage - in sleep many r.e.m.s beheld
the same moving picture of lost heroes,
again. Back by unpopular demand, O again.
Then the crusade of rents, utilities,
Kahoutek magic
of marital
blistering...
Say old bunkmate
how goes the convergence?
And my
father? Jack? Bobby?
Tell them short-lived heroes
are not short-lived.
|
1967
Sly Fox
~The Mustard Seed~
Church of the
Pilgrims/Presbyterian
22nd & P Streets, N W
Washington, DC 1967
Liberate Georgetown!
WAR! © R K Puma
"...Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they've all come to look for
America..."
--Paul Simon/America
Carl's Trip
Cap & Malink
Short-Lived
|
