Time & Consequence [In Forward Movement]
Objects, moved subjectively
in our skewed peripheral spectrum,
through moist, dilated pupils,
one friday night decades gone
in New Yorks Greenwich Village.
We hadn't quite yet peaked,
though our thoughts had been well blottered,
while we all sat juxtaposed
in this Village cafe grotto,
'front a stage of thick brown crates,
housed by Boonesfarm Apple wine,
recitations by Bukowski
'neath the streets of Cafe 12.
Curled wafts of gray-white smoke
fixed our wandering eyes skyward,
to the black-strobe lighted ceiling,
breathing in the vintaged dust
like a million blue-black stars
over ashwood table-tops,
while the sweet breath tongue of verse
mixed rhythm, sedating flux
with the punch of sweetest tea -
[and a chaser of java].
It was nineteen-seventy-six,
Deborah Harry bought us drinks,
we'll always swear she really did,
the same year Cronkite told us all
'bout the Jonestown Massacre,
and that 'The War' was just a 'conflict',
though Watergate was the skinny
back when vinyl still had spin.
Cat Stevens flew moonshadows
'fore his peace train sailed mid-east
with some tillermen from Tehran,
for a ticket to advocate
his love for holy war -
and the plot against Rushdie,
all while holding the Quran
and praying that the infidels
be banished from this world,
from a mideast mountain top,
overlooking red-stained desert,
in the wake of social cancer -
[pointed towards Mecca].
Such is time and consequence -
in forward movement.
poem by Frank James Ryan Jr.
Added by Poetry Lover
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