A Booster, I Hope
There’s a teacher of poetry
who teaches her own verse
Snakes Breasts and Nothings to a class
who must buy her book at full price
if they want to learn from her
how to make a poem.
Who was the authority
who gave her the authority
to pull out students’ eyes
her twenty Gloucesters.
I had nine years. I was fortunate
I cruised the Mediterranean then
crossed the United States in a Chevy.
In yesterday years I remember
watching chain gangs suffering
in San Antonio I saw Mexico
from a dentist’s chair.
How many oil wells and windmills
did I pass I would battle later.
I thought the Petrified Forest was a holy place.
I wanted to go down on a donkey
to the river that made Grand Canyon.
Father was against it. I have to say
I thought fate was flat tires galore
until we drove through Death Valley.
I felt, heard the first inkling
not yet a hint of fate and death.
When I was thirteen a fresh boy
I took a class in Shakespeare forever.
A little further along
the Cervantes Bach Mozart highway
I regret Greek was Greek to me.
I loved read and listened to Lorca
Rimbaud Yeats Auden and jazz
I crashed a party of international
poets and heroes
who spoke for their nations.
They gave their words to the world
they could have sold
for shekels pounds or nutmeg.
I swam in the deep pond of Thoreau
with African American poets and others.
I was pretty good at the Malcom X kick.
I am afraid when I utter a word
I give a poetry lesson:
talk like me or don’t talk like me.
There’s a virus of lies
that guns down liberty
going around the world.
Please get your booster.
These words are a mask.
Why do I say there’s a dictionary of clouds?