a flower lends its hands to gift charity

glow the sun, glow
the valiant rose slippers
continents of buds
under the rain, lending her hands
spread out,
the stalk buds to stem
she says,
"I went out to find paradise
the power of the flower people
like Daisy Miller
too fragile for industrialization."

"I don't care."

"Let me tell you about
holes in thought you can hide in,
let me tell you about Feynman
and endless other things."

"She spoke of Timothy Leary, of
the expansion of the mind, the discovery
of the Self
and we made love for hours on end
thinking
this could be it."

Mad children of the twilight,
Walker Percy
Norman Mailer
Allen Ginsberg,

if I could only think of something to say to her.

she spoke silence
and talked of
vampires
hippies
groupies
yuppies
yippies (Yiddish Hippies)
wimpies
dancing into the night and I
told her that we were all being stoned by Medusa
the thought
of a sexually-charged intellectually deviant female
turning us all into stone.

She said,
"You're so fucking strange."

Let me tell you
about pain which stones into pity,
egoism turned to contempt,
tell me tell you.

She spoke of lighting candles
lighting lights and loving each other
put flowers in my hair
and called me "Sitting Bull."

Only that, having loved her much too much,
I fell,
she dined upon the airs
and spoke of stellar ideas orbiting
of radiances and illuminations,
broke down Rimbaud and Jim Morrison
and spoke of Death
as the door to new life.

Let me tell you about sickness
and the search for identity.

let me

"Shhhhhhh."

She turned into an asp and went away.