Requiem for Whitman

My cosmos is not so tightly jammed
with swirling Van Gogh skies over my head
and not so blasted with big stars
screaming brightly over schizophrenic fields.
My planet is not so teeming as yours
with divine humans for whom I ache
regardless of gender details.
My heart races only for women that way.
I am awakened, only rarely, by the odd
miracle that opens me for an instant.

We have entered a new puritan age, old Walt,
and you would wilt and perish here.
We would ship you to Guantanamo
with a black number on your orange back.
We would feed you meds to twist you around
to face a little flickering screen and sit content.
You would grow sullen; your huge soul
compacted for the gated lifestyle, or die.

I would walk in your shoes, old Walt,
but I am a little leery of the open road
and its song, that nowadays sounds like diesel trucks
and screeching mustangs.
I would inhale the perfume of sweat
and love it as you do, but these days
we have all learned that humans stink
and there is illness lurking in every deep breath.
I long to unbolt the rusty door of my heart
and allow the ravens to flap out and fly free.

I am dreaming of your thick inky fingers that grasp
every steaming loaf of fresh bread
while gulping down huge mouthfuls of red wine,
fondling flesh and singing your crazy songs.
Poets are replaced by blind consumers
who collect gadgets and eat dead stuff from colorful boxes.
We sleep, we dream, and in our dreams, we find you.
There you sit, softly stroking our cheeks
and asking us to awaken and take your hand.

Dearest Walt, you are a white bearded monster,
a great wild smorgasbord of pulsing blood,
straining to burst the thin grape skin of a holy sage.
Walt, you strange old goat who roamed
the taverns calling out for anyone to drink you;
booming out an invitation to every mortal to embrace
your big body and become divine with you.
You are always bombed on the frozen now...
the amazing yes of being.