Whitman sleeps tonight (redux and context)

Jache once spent an afternoon trying to convince me that Walt Whitman was my "150 year old queer Brooklyn angel."

Walt Whitman, dead Brooklynite and poet

his explanation included an annotated portion of "Song of Myself", interspersed with snippets of our conversations over the previous two years (his and mine, not mine and Walt's). the nominal purpose of this encounter was to help "manifest our manifesto", an undertaking which, lamentably, has yet to come to fruition.

but this is beside the point:

Jache, living Floridian and poet

the point is that Jache is incommunicado at present, and i'm thinking of him. i wrote this a year ago today, to my best friend, my grandfather, and my 150 year old queer Brooklyn angel.

me and my grandfather, living and wordless poet

There is no sleep so sublime
as Whitman under a tree
in Brooklyn. I dream
of my grandfather

fresh cut grass
two cycle engine oil
and Childhood

nostalgia

spent on the front porch
chewing sprigs of birch
pine needles in the fall.
The redolence of spring

mingling autumnal decay

the smell of impotence
the taste eternal.