the deadly mixture of green and black bile
swamped the poor ailing liver in dark humours
doing the damage bringing fear and death
it was not for lack of meditation
nor of devil may caring
nor of gaiety and cult value
nor of pop notoriety
his friends remembered
how he wandered the midwestern prairie
how he sang how he went naked
how the guys down at the sunoco station
cracked jokes when he used the payphone
calling home and the lover he missed
his clothes fitting badly always
the pants forever slipping down
old button down shirts
left over from his straight days
he later sported a garland of skull shaped flowers
set off by a necklace of diamond teeth
and he could sing a long song now a dying art
to sing while dying having had it all
to have had it all and still be dying
hey like a fool like an old singer hey ho
the crowd of old friends he loved to join
yes and his intimates to whom he listened
groveling in deep gossip
wishing things could be otherwise
and the press loved him
to him they were kind it is said
he might speak of dharma and drop
a happy sutra or share a bit of doggerel
careful to keep his clothes on in the studio
even when tripping bullets
speaking often of kindness
in the depths of karma
hoping always for another party
where he might unbutton
but with never a tattoo never a piercing
never having lived to see the hated war
forgotten even by both sides now
in a frame of new necessities
who can now be kind and to what end
the sunny plateau rolls ever on
kissed by the feet of the questing fauna
grasslands shimmering in the eyes of birds
now the domain of the banks
and the manifest destiny of debt
the blood of violence has slaked these lands
as we approach the thirsty suburbs of wichita
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