after allen ginsberg
into the park and out the bowels
in a single drooping summer eve – swallow wordings & all worldly light! –
whose yells are timely interruptions of each phoneme
yell fuse! intent! manifestation! coda!
whose politics unhoused from porcelain passivity
want bars and easy and authority;
whose politics are born from rising costs of beer cans
and mohair sheets salvaged from steamers, and jellyfish
still blooming on the coast in caricatured seeking of ambivalence,
eroticising coin flips & a psychic tale: America! New York!
where lobotomies & clouds bear witness to our overheated fits,
befuddled memoirs, creeks in toilet bowls & blessed eves
spent dipping toes into the sunlight on the floors of strange apartments,
piloting homeward after nights downtown with cheeks covered in kisses,
feeling the heat drip down the train, yes this is summer
& we’d like everything.
to touch it all, to flip it over midnight panes like scrambled eggs
to see it kiss it play it hitch it speak it trip right through it
to be engulfed in gold, caress the cheeks of bright aluminium fields
to stretch like strings vibrating with jazz or stars or copulation
to brawl with premiums and liquor and the novel
in process for a decade, multiplied by indecision & potential.
to be just one more person in this room, seeking some happy
like old gals eating apricots from brown bags in the grass.
to live like all the world is calling out, is in this city
is in this language built of heat & love & humid.
Click here to read Eris Sker on the origin of the poem.
Image by Harry Gillen on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- sticky on the C train - January 3, 2025