My breath is long—

- Allen Ginsberg

You are Allen Ginsberg, a happy gay Jew,
with one good eye and far, far too much hair.
Nobody reads your poems like you do,
they don't have your flare (or breath), for sure,
and they can't write poems measured like:
naked—dynamo—cock—sphincter—ass.

They all think your best poem is Howl, but I don't.
I think it's Sunflower Sutra, but they say, That's wrong.
Howl's all madness, lots of speed, lots of acid,
Sutra's drowsy, sweetened—still mentions Blake—reads:

hairy fat beard cries, Kerouac sitting and watching,
grimy sunflower sits amid machines, dead, not a locomotive,
though tries to be.

And Ginsberg—Allen—, bless you, shouts loud, your soul! our soul!
Jack's soul! (his hangover kills, and you're shouting at him!),
that this sunflower, which is dead, is your soul,
the grime of industry has coated it, slick
like a phallic metaphor, and what's more! it is a flower,
not a train as it had been wont to claim,

and I like this manic Ginsbergian image you've got going,
talking to the flower, wielding the flower like a rod of soot,
parading your naked dead cock scepter flower, exclaiming
and preaching to Jack like the poor guy gives a shit,
you terrific bastard!–-and still, they tell me I'm wrong! well, fuck.
What the hell do I know? Maybe I just like flowers.