DHARMA BUMS III- Howling From The Rooftops-For Allen Ginsberg
by Gordon Coombes


Howl from the rooftops

Over New York to San Francisco

To the Mountaintops of Tibet

Ginsberg singing

While The Skeletons Dance

Sadly reciting the Khaddish

Whirling like a Dervish

Amongst the shinning heavenly constellations

of stars of souls

At Happenings and Protests

At those smokey jazz soaked darkened Cafes

Lost in a haze of marijuana discovering bliss

Wanting to share his moments of awakening

In his mania talking non-stop

Writing a thousand lines before the sun rises

Over the run-down mournful rooming houses

Of the darkened joyless caves of America-


Ginsberg finding solace in the Dharma

Finding the Buddha in unlikely friends

Ginsberg with flute and recorder and harmonium

making a joyful noise unto the Lord

Stopping to explain William Blake's multilayered vision

Of Heaven and Hell

of innocence and experience

to those gathered around like children

America's abandoned wandering children

Open and waiting for a sign or two

their souls still in the dark

crushed at birth longing for weightlessness

Waiting for the Buddha in them to sit

To see a vision of Nirvana

To hear the roaring engines of Galaxies Spinning

Finally joining the cosmic dance

Finally finding peace

As Ginsberg becomes a shadow in a mercurial mirror-

Part II

--- Coda for Ginsberg ---

There is much weeping & gnashing of teeth

With the death of our poet-laureate

William Blake & Whitman & Yeats

Baudelaire & Apollinaire long gone

for a time the torch passed on

to the next in this lineage

Ginsberg played the role

but he too has moved on

who is left to howl for us

Where is the new poet residing these days

just down the street from you

hiding out in a road-house

in the next whiskey bar

in the desert waiting for a sign

a burning bush Manna raining

down from Heaven a thunder bolt

ten deadly plagues

parting of the seas

raising the dead

perched on rooftops

wearing sack-cloths & ashes

howling over the roof tops

shaking angry fist at the moon and God-

--- Part III---

Remembering

Ginsberg howling waving a sun-flower about

trying to raise Kerouac's spirits

after a night of wild-drunkenness

& later after his death

having visions of those lost in madness

in drug-induced eternal sleep

of the death of his mother & father

his friends & his guru

playing his squeeze-box singing

father death blues & other tunes

no longer able to raise his

glorious-heart-felt voice

full of tears & laughter

no-longer can he howl for us

no-longer able to howl for himself

we recite the Kaddish & the Heart Sutra

for him-

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