A Stranger
You were a different soul-
A tortured youth, a gluttoned prince
The shaman, feathered and dancing
All sinew and ivory and pungent spice
A ricocheted bullet, on the wrong culture course
You were innocent and dangerous
A poet and a vagrant, homeless and sheltered
Brilliant in calculated naivety-
Doe-eyed and sharp-tongued, and wholly spectral-
For the rest of us, a lizard king
A demon who danced on color-wheel wings
Whose spiny back turned smooth for attention
Waterfalls in the desert birthed the oasis
And the wellspring of counter-cultured enlightenment-
The Indian sheds a single tear standing naked there, soldier
You are dead and ever-living, in a world of dream
Of wavering stacks of sounds and thoughts
Each counter-point, oddly constructed
Each voice a makeshift improvisation, routed in absent-mind
We’ll never know why you left us.
