Poetry by Tom Brady (Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, others)

Five Poems
by Tom Brady
Inspired by Various authors

Wail
(Inspired by Allen Ginsberg)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by greed
how trivial,
then,
my composition (the touches of light tarnished by the blood of the gold)
marsh gas seeping through the floorboards
of the Volvo
Exclaim!
The money pours like rain.
(Hurry gather it up gather it up)
Morning is the money show
the money show the money show,

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by greed
How trivial then the majesty of my elegant lines,
the carpet is white in the two car garage,
the badminton net in the backyard is new
New! I say.
(God’s house is New!. No-one is there the pews are painted blue
the priests are sick with a new disease,
a malady, a melody of flesh
they say the lawyers

in Italian suits made by Mao’s kids

on the Corporate Board,

teeter totter
roller show,
(with lots of pretty girls)
where the money pours like rain,
where once there was Acid in the brain
though they would not tell you so they learned to play the game
to make the money pour like rain.

Here is my plastic money, I have no God but Him
the Buddha on the pound, Karl Marx confound
ded
dead
dada.
Merry Go Round
merry go round,
smally.
I have no god but him the dollar on the candy bar
the chocolate
dripping on my chin
Where the gray hair grows & grows,
the daylight weeping while the money flows
(the piles of the dead (murdered & dismembered) Justice holds the scale, wait for the well to blow)
the Hole!
The Hole!
and yes, there is
sweat in the dark but wait for the well
to blow,

“the black gold is blowin’ in the wind.”
the chocolate dripping on my chin tastes vile,

everything has changed since then even the complexity of sin.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by greed,
How mad
then,
another declamation to be consumed and cast aside,

the refuse pickup is on Wednesday Morning before the sun comes up please arrange your priceless
bags in an orderly manner and be sure to throw
everything away to make room for the New!.

The New!
(The Shock Of
The New!)
Dada. Daddy bought her a
New!
Corvette, a red corvette for her brand
New!
room, the designer was once a gray groom
who danced on TV with a plastic broom,
(it was of course an unforgettable viewing experience,
though most watched Jeopardy
because the money poured like rain)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by greed
I have no need of an Underwood,
there have been updates
and everything is
New!

+++++++++++++++++++++

Wilmont on Mars
(Inspired by John Wilmont)

Pissing on the red sands,
an orange streak profaning
sterility.

“come, damn’d earth,
thou common whore of mankind”

relieve me.
I would watch your death throes from afar
the retreat of your lichens.
That sneer you had
when the plague spread.

Thy Art, old man,
is rotting in the abandoned buildings,
a last meal for the molds.
All the mountains are bald,
and the deserts roll.

The disease spread,
I am recompensed
though still dead.

=====================


for ferlinghetti

When the first
wordsmith
poet
madman,
looks down
at this green world
maddened teeming world
looks down
wildly screaming unbelieving
looks down;
the rest of us,
trite, hackneyed
will be empty, dry old corpses
with the blood
drained away,

petty visions of borders
little portraits of god & horses
used to plaster subway johns
in a crumbling forgotten town
faceless
beside
the silent el.

********************

Mushrooms with Dali
(Inspired by Salvador Dali and Hunter S. Thompson)

didn’t you
want to know
how the road bends
in oblivion?
Camille dies in red,
in a distant perspective
her dress blended in a hue
so blurred
that we are hurried from the room
separately
our battered suitcases
trailing rags
that we have cause to call our own,
in spite of
the spindle, the cock and the clock.

I wept on the drunken artist’s knee
my legs were rubbery
I spat at the visions blinking in the gloom,
I hastened to add but then fell silent
intent upon still faces,
waiting for rapture.

Lanterns rupture.
still life with glossy vases
scattered about,

elements of composition.
ruins,
clouds gather
about the vanishing point,
the primitive figure flees,

at an angle
fear feeds our needs.


#################

The Battle Of El Salvador
(Inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca and Franz Kafka)

It is the tree that speaks to the sky
with hurt eyes.
the poet that is tied to the whipping post
resides in ed
waiting to steal the sarcophagus.
<*>
who would enter the spaceport station
without a retina scan/?
<*>
the poets leap with drawn swords from the catwalks
flooding the plastic floor with dark blood which is easily
cleaned with a bit of Lestoil and bleach.
The dead are reduced and shoveled into corrugated metal tubes and buried in the
ash.
ed warps the cash cow with a trowel.
there is a monetary reward,and a small memorial. many of the guests leave with small tokens. the ships that were scheduled to leave abort. "Anti-gravs a sticky thing"
ed gloats hauling on the ropes
: as kafka’s nephew with trunk gets off the boat in the company of the famous senator while Lorca gets beaten by a drunken chinaman and goes on to write about the quality of bedsprings in cheap hotels in New York in 1910. which is the state of literature while Lazerus long is dying piecemeal on Secundus, just as ed came along dreaming of raw cunt and tequila on bare mattresses and song whipping through the windows in another cheap motel dawn.
<*>
that’s another pull my daisy, as gold clad Americans roll into bagdad with the dust settling on their arms. God enters the slick phases of his tumescence gaping with wounds. The edifice topples with the patriarch’s defeat. back home ed chews upon the worms, morbid in the flickering gas light. the relevancy remains: with sly Sidney banging mohammed in the back room with a broom while Donnie brasco writes it down. the vessels weave in the gentle wind, the ropes creak from the strain, most of the angels leave on the mag-lev for Chicago and the up scale stores. the executioner grants a final piss, but most are famished by the time they hit these golden shores, planetary drift causes Jupiter to swallow stars, and the snake hissed.

Ed wasted his Sunday speaking to the lord dressed in his prettiest clothes till the rum ran out and the crap game broke up though ed lost the savior’s clothes and was forced to wear his skivvies all the way home, which was just about the same as dying in them, he vowed to stick to cards but didn’t know the rules. Kafka’s nephew married a peanut vendor’s daughter and moved out west to Idaho.

Lorca of course was executed.
Most of the ships were lost off El Salvador,
just as the tide rushed in bearing angels.

Author bio:

T.E. Brady is an american poet on skid row. His most recent publication was a poem, Death in Manhattan, in the October 2007 issue of The Cerebral Catalyst. Additionally, his science fiction work will be included in Aowife's Kiss in spring 2008. Prior to that he has appeared in various magazines since he started writing, back before Time. He resides in New England, now.