H e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s b e r g

N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i v e s E d i t i o n

JOSEPH RICHEY

Blues For Allen

O Allen Ginsberg

Old bearded man

Hitchhiking thru the bardo

Fast as you can

Dreaming dreams of all the dreamers

scribbling them all down

I would be your spokesperson

from the sea where we drown

April is the cruelest month

Titanic to the day

Abe old Lincoln shot April 14th

Never saw the month of May

Thought you’d see my cherry blossoms

Thought you’d be back soon

No you ain’t coming back no more

coyotes howling at the moon

“AH” Allen Ginsberg

your book-gifts so inscribed

Reading “Now and Forever”

I lay me down to cry

For if not for Allen Ginsberg

I would not be here

Wouldn’tve married my wife Anne Becher

nor crossed this Hemisphere

Without Allen Ginsberg

Half my friends in the Void

Twas a Vortex o Expansive

Now we’re good ol boys

You got your black forest chocolate cake

You got to eat it too

Lived in Eternity’s Sunrise

Kiss’d the joys as they flew

Yet everywhere mamas and papas

you’re their worst nightmare

Let them see you in samadhi

with your tender stare

Wild Old Orphan

Heavenward you roam

Our Mothers on their thorny boughs

Chant their eternal Om

Irwin Allen Ginsberg

Decomposing King of May

Resurrected in my mind right now

On this the third day

Was gonna write an elegy

Was gonna write an ode

But riding blues like a bicycle

Lightens my heavy load

Blizzards in New England

Flooding on The Plains

Downing telephone poles and Poets

Nothing stays the same

Lilacs in the dooryard

Prayerbeads in our hand

Praying for Allen Ginsberg

all over this land

All-American Yogin

Not to knock on Heaven’s Door

Carpet long gone beneath you

step’d out twere no floor

Ah Dharmakaya

O sailing home

Consciousness passing over

No skin meat nor bones

Blessed be the peacemakers

Driving ‘way life’s empty fears

Their eyes have seen the glory

Of ten thousand tears

Tears for Allen Ginsberg

And Death’s Eternal Spring

Sad beauty in the Flowering

Hear our Pets sing

Blues for Allen

Healer, Bard and Brain

Blues for the seeker and the tired of tramp

Broken-hearted lover man

Time’s wing’d chariot

taking you away

Here we are in hot Pursuit

Into Eternity

April 7, 1997

[Originally published in NHS 1997, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs97/index.html#55.]