(Ray Charles, he's dead??)
and Ronnie is casketed
down Massachusetts
Avenue
Out that
austere cathedral
making you small and a part
of things, of this
systematic circle of coincidence
Ray Charles is dead...
and Ronnie is headed down the
Avenues, reaping
black cars, black suits,
police sharp shooters
perched or crouched on the roofs
of the motorcade
Single file, they sway;
the mourners, they move
(like Ray was singing)
for the grief of the touched
(black glasses refracting)
on a gray DC day
(that city I miss
like a junkie misses Smack
like a woman misses a child
long aborted, yet still... floating
in the subsection of your dream
like an amputee misses a limb- twitching in the running, ruined night
waking from slipping dreams...)
the final pomp and circumstance
a nation pauses, closes, entranced
by spectacle and somber
with 40 muffled bells
(For whom they toll…?)
Ray Charles is dead
and Ronnie is rolling
down the Maryland
Parkways
slowly, horse-drawn, mournful folk
saying
Hit the Road, Ronnie
(Hit the Road, Ray)
Hit the Road, Jack
and unchain this heart
from
Maryland & Virginia, where the Potomac
stretches
past me, and you, and this
highlighted carriage of lies
(The High Priest of Soul)
The Great Communicator
each in turn interned;
each in turn piled
with accolades
revisionist history
like a funeral procession
for giving
debts to a nation; AIDS; Granada;
Saddam; Iran-Contra
Ollie North and a South turned Republicrat
and the
trickle down, trickle down, trickle down
(the 20 year monkey)
the way each back carries
It’s own troubles in rucksacks
of Soul
& Sorrow
So Ray, sing us one more time
Some kind of Beautiful blue America
Ronnie, chuckle one more time
and wipe your brow, say something
senseless but best friendish
and in that
frame of light you will
Live on.
Live on, you two.
One in a corridor of untruths
One in a hallway of heroes
but still...
Live on.
6/11/2004
COPYRIGHT eak 2004
revised 6/15/2004 & 6/17/2004