Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Howl for Red

About two weeks ago, I lost a good friend- again. I have been struggling with my thoughts and feelings and am only now able to put into words what is echoing in my soul for my dear friend Red. For those of you unfamiliar with Red, I wrote about him last year, here.

"Howl for Red"
I saw the best disc of my generation destroyed by branches, carving hysterical paths,
rolling himself through the tree-lined paths at dawn looking for a chain to hit,
anhyzer dippers turning for the ancient heavenly connection to the shiny links in the middle of basket,
who poled, treed and tattered and hollow-centered and high sat up sinking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water lakes or floating across the tops of grass blades contemplating aces,
who passed through obstacles with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Kentucky and Duncan-light tragedy among the players of golf,
who cowered in unkempt bushes in underbrush, burning my money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror in my voice,
who got found in a public course returning through Tates Creek with a spot of mud on him for New York,
who vanished into nowhere Zen Lexington leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Veteran’s Park,
who wandered around and around at all hours in the disc golf course wondering where to go, and went, leaving my broken heart,
who disappeared into the forests of Indiana leaving behind nothing but the shadow of cargo shorts and the leafs and sand of poetry scattered in fire place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast of the creek investigating the teenage kids in shorts with one big red eye sexy in his translucent skin passing out incomprehensible leafs,
who made me howl on my knees in the fairway and was dragged out of the bushes being waved gently and manly,
who sat in bushes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to slide out into the light,
who was thrown watchful off teeboxes to cast my ballot for Eternity on the course,
who made me fall on my knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for his salvation and light and hills, until the soul illuminated his where for a second,
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of my own body good to toss a thousand throws.
My apologies to Allen Ginsberg.

4 comments:

Dan Weiss said...

Wow. Such passion!
Anyway, you want to play when you're in town? You said first week of July right? I'm keeping that week free until I hear from you!

db said...

Who says true love doesn't inspire great poetry...
Dan, there are actually some fantastic images there...as one who was editor of my college poetry magazine I have to tell you...you should send this for publication...I am not sure where...a disc golf magazine or something?

Oh, and my condolences on your loss.

Dan said...

Dawn-
Thank you for the condolences. Every day is a struggle but time heals all wounds, so they say.

As far as submitting it is concerned... Until publications begin accepting parodies of famous poems, I think I'll take a pass at submission.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant!