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.
