song for the stoned gambler

would-be vallejo
first goattee I knew well
zapata must've had hair like your's
black, shiny, full, hanging down below
your neck a revolutionary understanding
for a middle class boy from upstate Illinois
would-be vallejo
polishing rocks in time's stream
carving moments on lover's thigh
disappearing from the poker game
eliciting oral sex from my ex-wife
telling hard-edged ambitions borrowed
from your greek twin who's own
fate staggered thru a series of deaths
would-be vallejo the Goddess
came and changed your definitions
of goats and soups the scrabbled
games of accusation and meaning
you couldn't see her daughter
your culture cut you off at the knees
down under it there was always
some smoke the words like beetles
crawling through the aztec mosaic
you made of your brain
what isssssss /it a............llll
about? strange middle class king
of ancient aboriginal cultures lurking
now a thousand years along the
trail of dissonance some spaniards
brought Jesus for the Virgin of
Guadalupe to give birth to...
paranoid, commented, chained
to the bottom of a dinette set seat
every meal casting off dark gases
in a shroud of living and dying
would-be vallejo you were never
in prison for the love of a beautiful
girl or for revolutionary times
surely you have awakened by now
given up the old story admitted
the rapes of your youth and the
failures of your would-be poems
nothing will solve the crossword
except truth, something to choke
on. Her words still as mist
in a country of light.