A BEAT'S VALENTINE'S DAY

A bard at a coffee house
always at his artistic best
picks up his packet
of avant-garde postcards
quickly counting nine
you may regard this Beat poet
with knowing affection
in San Francisco at City Lights
his sounding direction
riding on a motorcycle
over his invading grounds
as he is spot on deciding to buy
the most clever of lyrics
over these poetic Valentines
along a bookstore wall
on this February Twelfth night
as he puts his literary signature
brightly red on the dotted line
and share a valentine with guests
from West Los Angeles
who are about to visit him
at his backyard retreat
who read his prose
from his folio of keen quotes,
as he puts his feet up
over the desk
with newly discovered
yet not secretive love notes,
spilling and drawn out
in an artistic form fulfilling
his ideas on a colorful obelisk
that are beautifully designed
in starry skilled structure covers
as he slowly recovers
from his latest nature's outburst
at his last heavy metal storm,
here with shortness of breath
under a burlesque black book
from the Sixties pictures he took
of his art critic friend Elizabeth
that he seems almost reformed
waiting for the open theater's
comic humoresque to perform,
not wanting to throw a tantrum
keeping all St.Sebastian arrows
adjusted in his quiver
he discovers his own grave past
in the lines he must deliver
tonight playing
a dreamy young vital upstart
who waits for love
of an expressive tomorrow
resembling the grave Malvolio
reacting a bit grotesque
in a poetic text of "Twelfth Night"
as he casts his bright narrative
like a robotic blue fish
with a live line on a sinking hook
restoring up inky metaphors
by his outlook of good wishes
that make his history stand out
at rehearsing an artful solo part
by handsomely staring
into a double mirror
convex and concave
with all his troubles to behave,
and looks fairly misunderstood
remembering his first rendition
of doing "Romeo and Juliet,"
or at his first reading
at a starlet's picture edition
over daring movie sets
with charismatic vital actors
always bursting out dramatically
in temperamental condition
shouting about past regrets
cursing themselves for being
once of a good nature,
with the worst of pretenders
to engender their stand up lines
and innovate for
their own personal nomenclature
so super sensitive
and berated it seems
by any sex and gender,
among cultured and cultivated
the poet shilling the text
given out to drama queens
in those receptive lines
from his artsy picture book
as he listens and quietly divines,
weighing in on a '78 recording
of a soul on the basement floor
quietly reading Rimbaud
Baudelaire and Verlaine
by the casement window
near the stage door,
here the poet tries
in his masked shadowy word
to write free verse
about a wreck asking for love
as suddenly he runs
outside the studio
under a hammock of rain,
as twigs fall off the woody Elms
from the heavy breeze
at the last storm remembering
his past feat at a quatrain
when a flock of blue birds
from Capistrano
rested above the branches
at the back yard shed
near crab apple trees
feasting at bread in the nest,
explaining the moment
his eyes shut out the light
which would glow
on the soft elephant lamp
he built with his own hands
after the last ride in a night cab
when he paid the tab
from a lottery's advance
as a gift of chance
from the mayor's charity,
he goes off to the loft's bed
with only poetry and prayer
returning as his sole guest
from the masked ball dance
remembers the correct answer
about the poet
"Giacomo Leopardi"
on a snowy T.V.'s Jeopardy
then does a crossword puzzle
in the latest Chronicle,
not laughing about years ago
about the libelous article
on the lie of Mr. Bell
that daily city sports reporter
was revealed against him
before he was fired
that caused us so much unrest
the one in his Bermuda shorts
who is now retired
was hidden by unlocking
his Harvard clock by watching
unlawfully wrong statistics
so his kindred nephew
Rocky Arvid easily won
at our risky marathon run
when all we just wished
was to court some wild fun
now it's water under the bridge,
the bard refills his forty years
in a cup of black coffee
with a warm memory
of many a Valentine
there in a fine wooden box
of black and white photos
in a studio backdrop
of Rudolf Valentino
kept at the back of a child Bible
that he once memorized
before he was riled up
at his first audition
on the hollow stairs
near Hollywood and Vine
letting the dim lights glow
on the unsettling words,
"Let you be mine."