OK Neal
aethereal Spirit
bright as moving air
blue as city dawn
happy as light released by Day
over the city’s new buildings—
Maya’s Giant bricks rise rebuilt
in Lower East Side
windows shine in milky smog.
Appearance unnecessary now
Peter sleeps alone next room, sad.
You’re reincarnate? Can ya hear me talkin?
If anyone had strength to hear the invisible.
And drive thru Maya Wall
you had it—
What’re you now, Spirit?
That were spirit in body—
Body’s cremate
by Railroad track
San Miguel Allende Desert,
outside town.
Spirit become spirit,
robot reduced Ashes.
Tender Spirit, thank you for touching me with tender hand
When you were young, in a beautiful body.
Such a pure touch it was Hope beyond Maya-meat,
What are you now.
Impersonal, tender—
you showed me in your muscle/warmth/over twenty years ago
when I lay trembling at your breast
put your arm around my neck,
—we stood together in a bare room on 103’d St.
Listening to a wooden Radio,
with our eyes closed
Eternal redness of Shabda
lamped in our brains
at Illinois Jacquet’s Saxophone Shuddering,
the prophetic Honk of Louis Jordan,
Honeydrippers, open the Door Richard
To Christ’s Apocalypse—
The buildings’re insubstantial—
That’s my New York Vision
outside eastern apartment offices
where telephone rang last night
and stranger’s friendly Denver Voice
asked me, had I heard the news from the West?