VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Merrit Waldon

Brilliant lips apogee

Twixt towering spines brittle gestures

Untamable languages breed

How we puke mere embers of stars

Never full flame

Choirs vast breeze the air we breathe

Invisible flame of youth

Of virility 

How sound the truths of our burgeoning

Softness

How we can never re animate the

Organisms burnt out shells

Fallen to be collected

By children whispering

Tales of star men

& un reachable planets

Sometimes I remember the smell of gasoline

Fondly ,  with nightmarish fervor

Eons ago    different times

I remember the mad shenanigans

Of teen age poets 

Sometimes I think of napalm made

In a Styrofoam cooler when I was a  kid

Experimenting with the ideal

Of viet nam,  or trying to experience

Something of my fathers war

I remember huffing gas for a whole week end

With a couple friends while He was away

On a bowling tournament in Reno

The early days of MTV

We were chemical extremists

& pilgrims of expression

I was 17 or 18

Oh the memories 

Tales, epics & organic projections

Of self

poem_

Listening to the slowly fading out screams 

Of butterflies 

The machine gun beats of drums as fast 

As artillery spewing forth 

The music clings to ribs 

To memory the soft parade files 

Along 

The stirring of something unseen 

& powerful 

Fingering the senses 

I watch the vibrational ripples of air 

Twirl like some kind of dervish 

From the 13^th century 

Or like monks drunk on wine 

Dancing through streets 

As if the mad infinitesimal energy 

Of our own divinities 

Clasped tight to hand 

Dragging our vision through 

Town 

 “you got to meet you a few 

Animals at the crossroads” 

Their filming the scuffling figures 

Scuddling down the sidewalk 

At dawn 

Following them to the ledge 

High above them 

In  the brownstone next  

To the liquor store 

Their vibrations sing with the sun rise 

The last poems of a drunken poet 

Crying on the shoulder of his muse 

Waiting for the unseen 

To pull them from the ledge 

The image is not new 

The holy renaissance of senses 

& star c(h)ords 

The music lingers  

Sinew, piss, and rivers 

Undiluted spirit of youth clamors 

“everything must be this way” 

Cyclical waves of never ending 

Impermanence 

Ever see the lips of an ancient bard 

Chapped & surrounded by hair 

Weeping 3 stories in to the night 

Calling to the dogs or the gods 

Looking for the lack of gravity 

“Tropic corridor 

Tropic treasure 

What brought this far to this mild equator” 

Looking for something new 

Like wine growing from the decomposing 

Bodies of Aristophanes 

& Jim Morrison 

Listening to the slowly fading out screams  Of butterflies