Medicine Wheel Ghost Dance

Shadows from the Inner Sanctum

I suppose I haven’t read enough Wallace Stevens,
Or maybe it is William Carlos Williams
Them who had their start long before Stegner
& I never hear da work of Jack Kerouac
in it’s original time and place like
when Bukowski heard the muse grunt,
Mellow. Or is it just as well left unsaid ?

Were they uncomfortable with a rural past,
A church floor that chimed for another Isidore
Who conjured up their provincial adolescence,
Floated images of a history they left unturned
replaced it with a ’tude and a sharper tongue
like so many half eaten Halloween cupcakes
Rated 4 star because no one tasted more than 1?

Maybe these luminaries are the lighter half,
The human side of the moon, a spoonerism
That spawned our taste for consumerism,
The inalienable right to have our own gaffe,
our niche of spotlight time,
a human being starlet whose work is hoping,
Hoping for a better day, a better day by far,

But we don’t talk about it any more.
We don’t listen to the chant, we can’t see
the good and the bad, the tawdry and the sad—
it is black and white and better left unsaid.
The dead-and-gone are dead and gone.
We are the guilty who will cause the end
Dishonoring our heralds with “I told you so,”

Furthur went way farther than we thought,
Better days are something, that can’t be bought.