THE DHARMA CLUB
for Amiri Baraka
In the cherry oxygen
Of the Dharma Club,
Under whatever light
Can’t be kept
Out of mind,
I never look back––
What’s the use,
Find your truth
Got to turn it loose,
The whole
Medicine show,
Unknown unknowns,
The book of streets
& frequencies
No one controls
As we overturn
The barricades
Sure as the poems of
Amiri Baraka
Console the foot
That stumbles
But cannot sleep.
Aluminum curtains
Blow over the petals
Strewn across
The black parking lot––
The parking lot
Of time, with its
Ordinary roulette
& broken corners
& velvet salt of dreams
Into the green lantern
Of emptiness––
With its monsters
& sewers
Of all that has been
Strangely possible since
The very beginning
Unbothered by delusion
& never used up.
5 April 2001
Spoken word version from Emergency Juke Joint.
Copyright © 2000 by Jim Cohn.
Text from Quien Sabe Mountain (Museum of American Poetics Publications).
Copyright © 2004 by Jim Cohn.