The great man speaks
the blue rinse of mild senility
detracting from his esoteric gravitas
seen but ignored by
each Silvia Plath suicide and bookish journo
each eager aged hippy, balding and bemulleted
who’ve read Kerouac and maybe even Huxley
seen but ignored by
the preening sycophant
from are tea e
whose muffled laughter
inane, and vociferously quaint
is performed for our benefit
each listening, rapt in bitter deference
to words sonorous with just
a lilt of beat
dripping with kitsch mood muzak
damp with the piss of Ginsberg and of Burroughs
soaked with the shades of vanished conviction
drowned in the shadow of ironic pretension
sunk in the cold and quiet grave of cynicism,
where we lie,
listening