Poem

Take guns and build a witch’s pyre,
bury the bullets, burn all the other
peraphernalia. Start to forget
your unnecessarily dead, your kin
murdered by drinkers, whoremongers, and thieves.

Don’t forget drinking in San Diego
to consider buying a .38
so you could continue becoming wild
telling Hell’s Angels what you thought of them,
their president dancing on the girl’s face.

You couldn’t stop watching Gimme Shelter.
In her trailer with her white pussy, she
asked, Do you want to go to Altamont?
She did. We were a thousand miles away
and she was okay for a one-night stand.

When summer came you were ready to go.
You left town, wheat fields, old loves, you went south
shaving the reaper close with his own scythe,
white hair falling from his beard into yours,
what would you have done with the grass that high?

Altamont comes after the Rolling Stones
in their quarters by the old speedway tracks.
Mick Jagger plays Meredith Hunter’s death,
then plays it again . . . How did this happen?
You can see his consternation on view.

In Virginia, your great grandfather dead;
his son, your grandfather, in Sallisaw.
You have to consider the odds: Die young
being brave or stay alive, growing old
learning to write until you get it right.

(6 May 2013) 

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander