
The World’s on a careening joyride
snaking along Cliff Drive
high above the moonlit surf rocks,
with drunken Frat Boy at the wheel,
motor gunning, tires chirping,
and you blank-staring down the edge
married to Knuckleheads’ fate.
It’s not a tragedy to die alone,
but it is to die lonely.
How do I want to die?
Quick!
But if it has to be slow,
let it be with Brompton’s Cocktail
and a 100 micro-gram chaser
of L.S.D. 25, twice.
Enough plastic’s in humanity’s gut now,
38 years into the blinding dark,
to pop out shrink-wrapped shits.
My days are numbered
but I’m not counting
for I keep faith with Nature:
fresh nectar’s in the Hummingbird glass
and it’s December,
Flat Top Johnny’s 78th.
Postwar began 26 July ’53,
and the ’50s ended ten years later
22 November.
The ’60s launched New Year’s ’59
and crashed cold and hard late ’73.
The ’70s flat-lined sputtering out in ’79,
and America died 4 November ’80.
34 days later
the Bloody Blackness took us down
our hallucinating plunge
god-gifted insanity hypnotized,
untouched by real awareness:
if ignorance is bliss
this must be paradise.
My castaway’s wish for shining youth
is glorious triumph over our bones
and lost hopes’ ashes greening anew.