Slouching Towards Incoherence

 

Slouching Into Incoherence

By Mike Garofalo

Incoherent poems of word salads
mis-mashed onions and beets mixed
with an obscure metaphorical dressing of
vinegar and bile, croutons of confusion,
tomatoes of nonsense thrown in.
I can’t figure Robert Creely out:
or from CA: Philip Whalen or Larry Ferlinghetti either}
[or from NY: John Ashbery or e.e. cummings either]

Brief excursions on bouncing backroads
of wordy mud puddles of randomness

closed the brittle door on hinges of sounds

read out, read out louder,
rant, whisper, shout out,
the spoken word; ritual tails
wagging like memories lost

flocks of vocabulary typhoons
smashing, yelling, broken cocoons
bursting butterflies of spinning sounds

Read out, read out louder
in a dank smoky coffee house
Hip precursor of Hippie clout

However,
Both Sides: Then and Now.
Hip Zen or Square Zen.
Clear as Sky or Clear as Mud,
Coherent as winter Logic or Obscure as summer Fog;
Throughout the Golden Gate...

Jumping off the ground,
falling up Meanings; or,
standing up Clarity...
Hanging around San Francisco City:

"Coits Tower still screws the sky"
Gregory Corso freed St. Michael from Alcatraz
Moscone and Milk: justice denied
Rexroth translated Chinese verses
Maya Angelou Let the Caged Bird Sing
Jefferson Starship wandered into the White Rabbit's hole
Thomas Cleary translated Taoist prose
Alan Watt’s old houseboat was sold
LSD glasses clearly unclear besmirched
Robert Hass pruned apple trees in Olema
Deng Ming Dao's Scholar-Warrior arose
The Summer of Love amplified Hippie Fun
Edward Espe Brown baked bread in Zen Robes
PhD's from UCB and Stanford ruled the roost
Wendy Johnson gardened the Green Gulch grounds
Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco
Isaac Bonewit's magic arose from Neo-Druid lore
Mike McClure centered Beast Language INCANTATIONS
Silicon Valley kids coded new languages with Fortran lines
Amy Tan put SanFran Chinatown folks on the map
Allen Ginsberg’s Berkeley Sunflowers chanted
Steve Job's last words were "Wow"
Jerry Garcia lifted up the Grateful Dead
Philip Whalen helped the dying and bowed
Robert Creely gave a brief, succinct, convoluted scowl
David Brautigan went lingcod fishing in the Bay
Lawrence Ferlinghetti turned the lights on at City Lights
Eric Hoffer loaded boats and warned of True Believers
Zen Master Suzuki taught what Not to Think
UCB students sat-in & shouted out
Hitchhiking poets cried like clowns

Eyes of my Ears: Mystified
Beat poets died. City Lights sighed.

Befuddled by
some poet's words
repeating rereads
increased the blur.
No pearl in the oyster.

25 Steps and Beyond:
The Collected Works of Mike Garofalo