Three generations,
Little Rock to Obama,
Three generations
From police dogs and night sticks
To the steps of Lincoln,
The White House, and the world.

Three generations
and still our inner cities
Moulder in self-pity,
Three generations
Casting the blame
On everyone but themselves.

Three generations
Of liberal guilt and accusations
Three generations
Without examination
Of the fundamental questions
That remain unanswered

For three generations.

The sound of dying birds,
Falling tree limb to the ground,
Breaks the 3 A. M. silence in the courtyard

And encourages the rats
To openly satiate their hunger,
Moving noisefully from dead bird to dead bird.

It can really ruin the effect
Of the full moon rising
Above the walls of the Pentagon's Center Court.

We were all still alive then,
Idealistic as only young humans are;
We were all vaguely anti-war,
Supporting the boys
Who were avoiding the draft
By staying in college and attending class.

At night we would gather to listen to our music,
Discuss the weighty issues of the moment,
And sometimes smoke pot;
Our lives revolved around the music,
The War, and semester finals
As we speculated which professor
Might really be queer.

Decades passed, the revolution desubstantiated,
We all slipped apart as our lives materialized
And university merged into high school and the past;
Some of us died of war, some of us from drugs,
I got married and raised three kids
And became a competent poet.

Until now, years later, an ancient of days,
It seems, at times, that I alone survive
To remember those years as we actually lived them
When rock was everything and Bobby campaigned
On that last great crusade against indifference.

A decade since Father Luc died,
Ten years passed and I'm still here
Waiting for his next email to arrive.
I wish Father Luc had been right,
That there was a God and an afterlife
So I could hear his voice once more,
Find his words when I opened outlook
And perhaps believe as he did.

I don't seem to be dead,
I don't want to die,
I want to stay alive
Until I don't want to anymore
And the power goes out
On the crash cart.

It's all downhill from the Inauguration,
All you can do is make mistakes;
No one remembers all your tough decisions,
Only the ones they think you got wrong.

It's the nature of the beast,
The description of the job,
The leader of our country
And our favorite dart board
(And we bring our own custom darts).

So if you find you don't like the heat,
You'd better buy a new car with better air conditioning.

When I go,
I want to go Halal
So I can be hand slaughtered
By a Muslim
Or perhaps a Kosher Rabbi
(Although they don't seem to emphasize
The personal touch
That's displayed so prominently
In the window of the Mercado.

I think the key is "hand slaughtered"
-- Thems the words on the sign --
Hand
Slaughtered
By a Muslim.

If Moses and Mohammed were alive today,
They could probably write a diet book
That would top the New York Times'
Best Seller List.

Mickey Mantle is President
  of the United States,
I live in Ebbet's Field,
My serial number is 69
  69  69  69.
 
I live in a country
  with Yosemite Sam,
Cary Grant
  is the Queen of England,
I need a shave,
  you bastards.

Although it would appear
That I am linked
To Whitman, Melville, and Shakespeare,
The only linkages that matter
Are those inside my head;
Where I may borrow
From Frost, Wilson and Zimmerman,
A good poet is also a good thief
And I have stolen images from Heinlein,
Words from Jack and Bobby
And laide them on the rhytms
Of the Bible, rock 'n' Roll and the catechism.

Inside my neurobiology,
I am Sappho as much as she
And consciously avoid my lyricism
So I will not draw more
That a superficial comparison:
Where she cries, I cry,
Where she laughs, I laugh,
And where she is alone so am I.

If I construct great cathedrals
Of careful meter and metaphor,
I do so with a skill
Learned from Chuck Berry
And  memories of Roy Orbison
Drifting brightly at night
While I listens on my crystal set,
Waiting to fall asleep
-- But I am neither Chuck nor Roy
Or even Buddy Holly,
Though they all may be a part of me.

I am linked to the human experience,
That great soul who makes us who we are;
My blood pulses with our humanity,
Grows frustrated with life's obstacles;
My eyes have seen six decades of war,
Six decades of our dying and being born
And I would see more.

Although it would appear
That I am linked to all those
Who have gone before me,
The only linkage that matters
Is the one between my brain and pen
And my ability to capture the endless ocean
That holds us firmly in our earthly flesh,
That infinite sea in which we all swim
And, at the end and bottom of every and all,
That luminous moment of our singular drownings.

Standing Bone Naked,
Here I am,
Constructing verse
Of suggestive implication,
Slyly inserting sexual inuendo
And double entendre
Where it sits unobtrusively,
A low soft moan
In a quiet bedroom;
Poems to lubricate one's desire
With witty climaxes
Filled with evocative metaphor
And penetrating insight
That offers more
Than the poem delivers:
The orgasm is all in your head
And the page, revisited,
Only words and the rhythms
Of love making.