The New Rising Sun

I sit at the cafe with my legs crossed like a cool cat
I’m chasing something far and away
It’s mystery, unattainable
But I must have it
My words are elementary
I’m like some infant
Haven’t learned to walk
Every effort seeming futile

I wish to break free from the confines of orthodoxy
Break free from concerns of passing time and trivial rhyme

If I take the slightest step toward Kerouac and Ginsberg
I will surely misstep,
And face the ridicule and self-neglect

Oh to break free
To break free and stay walking
Basking in enlightenment and consistency

—

I wish to join the legends of the Fall
To strip away the fat, the laziness
And states of satisfaction
I want the rush of the drive The ecstasy of reaction
To live in youthful romance
To die in the streets
Having told its tales with honesty, and
Having enjoyed every second of honor

Alas I am a fraud
Nothing more than a suburban boy
Whose belly remains full
I live a life of true love
I enjoy companionship
In home life and joy
To abandon this, I’d be a fool

And to abandon it, for what?!
For security in identity?

Is identity all that I am chasing?
Merely to be seen by others as one who has seen?
As the troubador!
As the patron!
As the minstrel?
As the poet?
Prophet?
Outlaw?

But I am a fake
There is nothing more in the spectrum to take.
Jimi Hendrix is dead.
Janis will no longer sing.
Bob Dylan is an abandoned mystery.
The Beatles are all but history.

Where in the expanse of world literature there existed red deserts and radiant moons
There are now small waves and recycled monsoons (afternoons)
Hemingway faded into elderly oblivion
I thought I saw Chuck B. and Jerry Lee
A transparent, blue apparition

Scooter still stands in a defiant mission
But yet even he had the premonition
He sang beneath streetlights and sang the unforseen
How poets down here write nothing at all
Just stand back and let it all be.

We stand in an era of broken promises and exploitation
Of masturbatory order
There is no incentive for leaders
For we crucify those who try and take the world on their shoulders

I thought something not long ago
Must’ve slipped my mind now
Just cut my hand and there stands a man
A distant shadow I know
And with his guitar he begins to play
For the few who will listen
United as one
Maybe someday will come
The dawn of the New Rising Sun

—