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THE GHOSTLY DEAD'S TUNES
The ghostly Dead's tunes
echo yet through
our dreams
and expose
all our schemes
as hilarity and
false ambition.
Everything comes easy
except when we make it difficult.

Johnnie remembered
the day Jerry said
everything,
this and that,
and it surely
looked like rain.
Johnnie remembered.

I awoke from my
slumbers and
dialed up a number
expecting an answer,
or at least an echo of
the thunder, but
the silence only came.
Some other arrangement
and some other pain.

We wrote the greens
and painted the yellows
beatitude saints raised
on Revolution.
Zen happy old
traitor Pounding
down another
round of nonsense
and allsense.

When I reach long
I come up short
when I stay quiet
roars like hurricane
Casey's gone,
and nobody sings
Joad ballads, or
rights wrongs
or writes songs.

Too much
congestion,
contusion,
confusion,
barnacles
and rust,
to ashes
to dust.

---Jack Oakes

 

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