I am he who crushed the hippy grape and found it wanting,
who limped across a landscape littered
with the paraphernalia of false hope —
raw and tender, seeking bliss in the face of a flower,
the thighs of a sensitive woman who once nurtured
the ethereal petals of poetics inside my addled brain.
Now, I stand inside my solitary beard
and tremble before the architects
of a new millennium.
Children still battered by a Winter season
of aggressive politics, my daughters blistered
beneath a frozen sun, the seismograph of humanity unbalanced,
about to create yet another upheaval
of misery and suffering.
Once I painted the psychedelic chapel
with an alcoholic’s hand, quivering, leaning forward
with stringy hair disheveled and not finding
iridescent light inside the fibres of my brush.
The dream canvas torn asunder by malicious fingers
that dissolve like ice cubes upon the polluted
shoreline of mankind.
And as the guardians of a sage’s cave
prepare for yet another slaughter of wisdom,
I turn toward my bed chamber and reflect back
in search of a few moments of genuine peace.
Oh down these few short years given to me,
a lifeline of tumultuous questions,
assassinations and serenity,
all coming together to form a half stitched tapestry
of shadows and blinding light.
Down past the naked innocence of Woodstock,
the galvanizing imagery of Dylan and Ginsberg,
the half awake yawn of my Buddhistic leanings.
Down past the archetypal temple of feminine bodies,
the dulcimer strumming frog on the outer lip
of the moon, the theosophical question
of WHO AM I?
Down past the burning fields of Vietnamese horror,
the migratory bodhisattvas who kissed my brow
with possibilities of ultimate understanding,
the ghostly chant of Shelley and Rimbaud
and Kerouac.
Down past the Maharishi and the levitation
of the Pentagon, the delirious summer of Love
and the police brutality of Lincoln Park.
Down past the miraculous birth of my two daughters,
the Himalayan rose that rests between
my blinking eyes, the mythology of Haight Ashbury,
the reality of my warring species still not divorced
from a cave man mentality.
Yes, this conglomeration of a few short years,
wherein I carved my musing into the bark
of a Bodhi tree, tried to comprehend
the hieroglyphics from the ultimate source
of poetics and laid down with the delicate lamb
of deeper expression in an attempt
to make a difference in the overall scheme of things.
And as I stare into the morning mirror,
my face lined with experience, I pray
that the supermarket lobotomy will dissipate
like the dew
and that we will learn to erase
disharmony
with a compassionate
thumb.
A contest entry
- Let The Sun Shine;;Or The Earth Cool, Happiness And Pain;; All The Same Game (The Best Of The Best) by HereComesTheSun.
575 points, ended August 12, 2008, 32 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Anything you want...Show me Your Best Poems..I need inspiration..PW's Welcome! by Hetha.
2100 points, ended August 20, 2008, 159 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Want to be READ? ENTER HERE! by Avatar of Innocence.
525 points, ended September 7, 2008, 130 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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Thank you very much for being patient with me, and entering my contest.
Stunning, I am left speechless. Adding to finalist-list for closer scrutiny.
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I somehow got passed those hippie grape years without even knowing they were there. In San Francisco I nearly clubbed a man who was mistaking an old homeless drunk for a hippie. Hippies had their own dignity ... the homelss should be allowed theirs too.
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this poem was fantastic and a great write i can tell so much thought put into great job
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This reminded me of Ginsberg's poem "Howl" to some extent and sort of that song by Ani Difranco called "fuel", where she goes beneath the train stations and the cab wheels and there is all this movement in her song. I mean really the observations here are stunning. You have so much to digest in terms of poetry, that I am sure it scared many readers away who might not have been able to get through the whole thing, for fear they might understand too much. Or their focus is simply dimmed. What a last stanza! If this was not a pre-written poem, I'd say enter it into my contest, as I'm sure it would have been very well received. Also, what would be the point of critiquing this really? It has so much going on and its own internal clock ticking away...It would just be ashamed to tighten it or whatever. I very much enjoyed this piece. I shall keep an eye out for future poetry from you.
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excellent
Yes, this conglomeration of a few short years,
wherein I carved my musing into the bark
of a Bodhi tree, tried to comprehend
the hieroglyphics from the ultimate source
of poetics and laid down with the delicate lamb
of deeper expression in an attempt
to make a difference in the overall scheme of things.
well you did a wonder by sacrosancting your poetic talents in such a great manner..that was so secretive and holy.Congrats on that.The overall poem was a great read.Thanks for sharing.wonder if you go over my portfolio and offer some comments.
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The hippie grape is a metaphor, which I hope conveys to the reader that I experienced, tasted those days to the fullest and did indeed find them lacking, not so much at time of the crushing, but that the aftertaste left much to be desired. My generation had high ideals and aspirations and unfortunately not much has really changed, in fact society may be even worse off.
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Really liked the opening line, it certainly hooked me into the read 'I am he who crushed the hippy grape and found it wanting' as I really wanted to know exactly what you meant.Some powerful and evocative imagery and descriptive detail really makes this come alive for the reader. I found the repetition of 'Down past' also very effective in conveying the sense of narrative and passage of time. This also seems to really evoke a specific time and spirit of that other age (I'm sorry I don't remember it, but I wasn't around) but did like the final comment and references to how age is now present and the 'supermarket lobotomy' is such a powerful metaphor.
Definitely an interesting and thought provoking write, good luck in your contests. Thanks for sharing.
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