Lightning Sword: Journal of the Apokalypse

DEAR FERLINGHETTI II

You’ll be a century old come March 24

if you live that long,

and you do my heart great good,

specially—these days—Poetry As Insurgent Art

and I’ll be sad to see you go

if you go to hell

but glad if heaven

Yes, it’s true

I’m one a’ them

who belong to Jesus Christ

Bible and all

and like gone Allen 

a howling one

and my heart will cry if you go down

it cries now actually

‘cause then it’ll be too late

and what I’m singin’

is a lover’s quarrel with man’s fate

our land’s great poet

dissing the glory of God

O let it not be, God above!

_________

Nemesis is knocking at the door

                             –Lawrence Ferlinghetti

You think you could get away with it?

dissing the Lord Christ

all these centuries

as though He didn’t exist

and would not render every man and woman

their due

Even ol’ Patchen saw it coming

lions of fire

herald the Day

death on their tongues

nemeses these poets

to wake you

lest you die in your sleep

a generation in the Matrix

but He sends the poets

with death on their tongues

nemeses calling you out

from the city of destruction.