no EXIT

Once,

          when subterranean eyes 

          gazed past infinite doors, 

          paint tubes with possibilities,

          you figured you'd spend your time being free,

          inside outside

          loving her or him,

          a liberated child playing in Jersey treehouses

          ponies below chewing chestnut leaves,

          your long peanutbutter hair 

     showering around you.

Before,

   intuitively alive,

          you were hip to Jazz Music,

          drank with Dolphy and Coltrane 

          Monk, Miles, and Max Roach,

          improvising inside and around crazy harmonies

          laying down embroidered street rhythms 

     playing outside and through your mind,

          and we swelling along with your spirit.

So tell us, 

          what happens when the band hops off the train,

          jumps another star to embrace,

          some other sun,

          when all the time you are the star-

          The Sun's Innocent Visionary?

Then one night,

          we walked into Vincent's life-size painting,

          one gray with death,

     a pre-meditated twisted dissimulated portrait

         commissioned by some terrified undertaker

         caffeine rapping nonstop all about the Artist's desmise-

         Hey, Didn't We Already Learn We Are All Gods?

Miserable,

          wounded from bleakness, 

     yet you still had yourself you said later,

          so we decided-

          “here’s another full sky of ripe yellow corn to harvest!”

So,

     who's really the searcher?

          who harvests from your visions?

          and who really is the elegant slave?

AND WHERE IS THE EXIT?

Never,

          had we thought of you as some unfinished letter…just some name in a phonebook…

Instead,

     we sensed splendor with your voice.

Still,

we were told of necessary decisions made

          affecting other voyagers around you,

          planets around a sun,

          other sailors who loved your Strength

          yet understood the enforced isolation,

     the price paid, your essence,

          surviving on that unpopulated island

But,

          that past has flowed,

          endured by a dreamer

          who lost your letters in that flood,

          who never decided falling down to stand up,

          whose night of promise ended

          when you drew your first straight line

          while refusing to recall the straight lines

          drawn for you all these years,

          lines rusted, more petrified than alive

          that together formed that confine

          that encompassed you there.

Now,

          you still exist yet devoid the richness of birthplace fertile woods,

          bereft the rise and crash of the Rockaway Ocean.

Instead,

   the Artist gorged,

   and violated,

   swallowed and vomited your reflection from his eyes

        and there was no exit for you.

Tonight,

           we all kneel broken without empathy 

           having seen the outside of another closing door.

Yes,

          you have not forgotten darling surprises,

          sailing ship riffs inside simple lovely chord progressions.

Then,

          please never lose your wide open Songs,

          those surviving melodies that truly were your own-

          so very free,

          and easy.

Wayne, NJ

5/5/73