The Eel People
(Requiem for an Era)
It is quite strange that it comes to mind, gone days of an era, without rules or
ethics, a time when I walked the streets of San Francisco, slept in the barracks of North Carolina, and Alabama, and onto Germany, and Vietnam.
talking, reading, fighting, breeding, listening to Rock & Roll, Elvis Presley,
whom we all wanted to be like; buying records to listen to on the stereo
the rhythm, the rimes, they floated wild in my mind—even forty-years after—
And read Will Durant’s books, cover to cover, silently, and wept, realizing
how the world came to be— (perhaps will end)
Dreaming back through time, my time—alas, how it accelerated to now, to-
ward, Armageddon (terrorism), the final conquest—
countdown; the cities burning Night and Day—and what comes next,
it would seem from history, and visions, more unrest, intimidation
a moments cry away, and the great Bear, and China, with the phantom
Satan, awaits a crumbled bed for America, that now is forming—
like this poem I write, in the dark—tonight, wanting to hide in Oblivion—
And perhaps Death will be the remedy for many, who remember,
prophesy, in the book of Revelation, or Denial’s Book of things
to come to pass—and my own imagination of a thin world—now—
Dreaming back through time, my time—alas, how it accelerated to now, to-
ward, Armageddon.
Not much to say, but tears for those I saw in my visions, dream-visions,
massed, and fooled by illusions,
like the days before the Great Flood, I saw people screaming, selling, drinking
kneeling to, and doing whatever for fame and fortune,
worshiping the god of lust, in it all—longing for it to last—while age
leaped forward, and all became the past—nothing more?
They leaped at me, as I went out to walk the streets, looking at me like eel
people, in Castro, in San Francisco, in the corners of Augsburg,
Germany, on Wabasha in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the corners of
Vietnam, eel people, coming out of their pits, under the clouds,
stinking—the sky above—, no rest. And I went down South,
—Alabama, North Carolina, in those far off days,
the eel people, like shallow water, some hidden deep, 12,000-feet
eating off another’s grief, giving you poisonous things, as they did me
in Seattle of America—frightened I ran to the train, back to St. Paul,
Minnesota—where I had come from
to the quiet life for a spell, then onto Vietnam, war and hell,
sand and sweat, in the back of five-ton trucks, muggy and wet—
I found education along the way, a few marriages, all broke down,
and my learning continued, mad as I was, it was no dream,
rather, it was life in the living, some in the making?
#2187 1-28-2008 The poem refers to the time period, as indicated in the poem, perhaps 1968 to 1971, and now in 2008 being remembered, for what it was, and what it is now (or has come in the past 40-years), and what it might turn out to be (in the near future); just a poem on imaginative prophecy, according to patterns, history, and Biblical verse, in poetic prose.
(Requiem for an Era)
It is quite strange that it comes to mind, gone days of an era, without rules or
ethics, a time when I walked the streets of San Francisco, slept in the barracks of North Carolina, and Alabama, and onto Germany, and Vietnam.
talking, reading, fighting, breeding, listening to Rock & Roll, Elvis Presley,
whom we all wanted to be like; buying records to listen to on the stereo
the rhythm, the rimes, they floated wild in my mind—even forty-years after—
And read Will Durant’s books, cover to cover, silently, and wept, realizing
how the world came to be— (perhaps will end)
Dreaming back through time, my time—alas, how it accelerated to now, to-
ward, Armageddon (terrorism), the final conquest—
countdown; the cities burning Night and Day—and what comes next,
it would seem from history, and visions, more unrest, intimidation
a moments cry away, and the great Bear, and China, with the phantom
Satan, awaits a crumbled bed for America, that now is forming—
like this poem I write, in the dark—tonight, wanting to hide in Oblivion—
And perhaps Death will be the remedy for many, who remember,
prophesy, in the book of Revelation, or Denial’s Book of things
to come to pass—and my own imagination of a thin world—now—
Dreaming back through time, my time—alas, how it accelerated to now, to-
ward, Armageddon.
Not much to say, but tears for those I saw in my visions, dream-visions,
massed, and fooled by illusions,
like the days before the Great Flood, I saw people screaming, selling, drinking
kneeling to, and doing whatever for fame and fortune,
worshiping the god of lust, in it all—longing for it to last—while age
leaped forward, and all became the past—nothing more?
They leaped at me, as I went out to walk the streets, looking at me like eel
people, in Castro, in San Francisco, in the corners of Augsburg,
Germany, on Wabasha in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the corners of
Vietnam, eel people, coming out of their pits, under the clouds,
stinking—the sky above—, no rest. And I went down South,
—Alabama, North Carolina, in those far off days,
the eel people, like shallow water, some hidden deep, 12,000-feet
eating off another’s grief, giving you poisonous things, as they did me
in Seattle of America—frightened I ran to the train, back to St. Paul,
Minnesota—where I had come from
to the quiet life for a spell, then onto Vietnam, war and hell,
sand and sweat, in the back of five-ton trucks, muggy and wet—
I found education along the way, a few marriages, all broke down,
and my learning continued, mad as I was, it was no dream,
rather, it was life in the living, some in the making?
#2187 1-28-2008 The poem refers to the time period, as indicated in the poem, perhaps 1968 to 1971, and now in 2008 being remembered, for what it was, and what it is now (or has come in the past 40-years), and what it might turn out to be (in the near future); just a poem on imaginative prophecy, according to patterns, history, and Biblical verse, in poetic prose.
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