Oyster Boy Review 19  
  Fall 2010
 
 
 
 
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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