Chrsyopylae

This is a poem I wrote as an undergrad at the end of my own experience in SF Lit class.  This wasn't my creative project (I actually did a research paper on Rexroth as the paternal figure of the Beat Movement), but something that just kind of grew organically out of everything I learned over the course, especially from the Brechin readings.

Chrsyopylae

by Trey Highton

“Westward the star of empire takes it way.”

-Berkeley

The greed of man bred in the bed of the American river.

Marshall’s hot hand in the river pan

sent industrial Argonauts chasing Golden Fleece

on a Sherman’s March through the Sierras,

razing Tahoe and pissing in the ashes.

Flushing nature’s sanctity with toxic waste

into the Central Valley and taking the “precious”

for the Ali Babbas to pitch at a profit,

snake oil options in the latest, greatest vein.

Makes Comstock look like birdfeed.

Rolling sand dunes of Yerba Buena

drift with the wind no more.

Hallidie’s cable car holds Nob Hill.

Deidesheimer squares climb higher and

higher on its back, shiny phallic

Towers of Babel. Monuments to Moloch.

Chief scalped the outlaw Hetch Hetchy, found running

naked with John Muir through Yosemite, and brought

home the bounty to Phelan. John Muir escaped, but

was mortally wounded in the attack. Lew Welch

is still looking for the body.

Hearst oiled the war machine and

molded minds with headlines,

attempting to annex Mexico and the Philippines.

Collector of not only fine art and rare treasures,

but nations as well.

Bloody Thursday caused big money

to break the back of the proletariat

and dismember the body.

President Truman’s personal coroner

Dr. Taft Hartley said the death was from natural causes

and a lack of patriotism.

Sacco and Vanzetti and Chessman

stroll arm in arm, ghosts of Golden Gate Park

singing “The Internationale.”

Ralston swims rings around Alcatraz,

his creditors still clamoring on the beach.

Jazz oozes down the olive oil alleys

leading to Ferlinghetti’s North Beach

beat bop book shop,

where Ginsberg’s “Howl” still echoes in

the Six Gallery.

Halos hidden in a

bare bulb benzedrine basement,

Jack and Neal spark off one another.

A pair of flint stones,

the City their fuse.

After the brilliance of the bomb flash,

the artists were overrun with impersonators.

Spicer fumed and scowled

at every goatee and beret.

Rexroth anointed Snyder with

the simple wisdom of Tu Fu,

on his journey to find Han Shan’s

Cold Mountain of the ancient Orient.

Neal moved to Denver,

Ginsberg to New York,

McClure toured with the Doors,

Dylan got saved, and

Jack trapped, Buddha in a bottle.

Kaufman split with the sardines,

down to old mescal Mexico.

Leaving Brautigan alone to his trout

and his tropes, napping in the sun

at the feet of Franklin in Union Square.