Party 1971 - The Velvet Underground

The TV room's drunk.
And the kitchen.

You're
ripping curtains off the cabin windows,
sort of

jig dancing. The lake’s
fifty yards across the pebble beach, and dark.

And your stars,
dark from an ounce of gin poured
into a can of beer and sipped

under wincing eyes. Sherry,
both hands flat against her mouth,

sees and laughs till eyes go red and run-down.
Her dinner was beers and oatmeal cookies.

Behind its little window, the cassette tape
turns out galvanized rhythms that
pin you to walls and floor,

jolt you back and forth toward tomorrow,
slap you toward its throb of sunlight: it
will be weak to your eyes.

Twenty years of turning to go till a field,
sloping easy toward ocean,

says hello to your waking up,
a morning walk with Wagner
breezing down your mind.

And a notion about roots used for medicine.
About flower clusters with

rayed, yellow flower heads
that tell you everything about the sun.

 

© Tim Bellows