Poetry
Meeting Ginsberg at the Portrait Museum
Mark A. Roberts
Ah, here I am
middle-night
drinking
leftover wine
thinking of dead Ginsberg
how his last word, before he dropped the flesh and went bust, was full of Allen Ginsberg lust:
If I come, we'll have to have an orgy, and if that happens the girls will be lonely!
The question?
We asked ole Allen, our poetic guide, to lead us
deluded suburban angels through the levels
of our spectacular amerikan hell—
To the may-be poets sprawled
in picturesque pose, miming whole albums
of beat black & whites
on the rising steps of the portrait museum,
his profane blessing sounded sacred,
blended with the homeless man's unexpected operatic aria
echoing like Pollack's paint against the walls of state—
Ginsberg floated, ghostly, lips and skin awash
in street lamps, yellow and buzzing,
his face like a child, or a sunflower
tilting toward the language of wanna-be Dantes.
Our voices waver in the air and Ginsberg's leaving
nothing but a trace of his nasal lullaby:
ah, la, la, la, ah . . .
poetic angelic fading