Sidney Wade: "Beatitudes"

I think the title refers less to Jesus than to Kerouac, Corso, et al. This sure reads like a playful, songful update of Beat poetry, doesn't it? Totally engaging. Good clean fun. BTW, Wade is a woman.

Beatitudes
(From Celestial Bodies, Louisiana State Press, 2002)

Let me take out my magic tar baby pencil
and scribble out for you what I saw

when I settled into that dense cloud
and caught a glimpse of God’s hide.

Plainsong Anthony and the Plainclothesmen
sang in the language of stones.

Mister Mistry pulled out the bewitch stick
and berserk mazurkaed through the radiant blind.

The Rhine Maidens wheened out the required
Requiem and then ran off at the mind.

The Legal Ramifications of this are yet unknown,
but I know. I’ve got interstitial vision.

And sometimes I take a wisdom pill.
But this was panoramic for real.

There was passion, power, plenitude.
Low-sodium acrobatics, mind-sap, maw.

Levantine parsimony. Paternalistic flaw.
My mother’s perfume: Pandemonium Marmalade.

They were all torch songs,
kind and complicated by doldrums and pang.

What they mean to say is,
You are the higher goods, Ignotus.

You are a magnificent fool.
Let’s entwinkle. Star star star.