Uneasy Kesey

Uneasy Kesey
by William Dean

Kesey's kicked it at last;
He's shuffled off the scuffed Levi's
And dowager boots
And joined the coots
Up there where the past
Is all coffee houses, divas and lies.
Oh, he told his truths
Whatever they were.
Did you know any?
The generations were many.
I'd think they were a burr
Under the saddle rump of sooth,
But prophesies are so much
Cotton in the field
And only the lonely spin
While many more imbibe their gin
Beyond the poet's touch.
What do they yield?
Oh, yes. Didn't think
He was a poet, did you?
Just some scrabbling prose
Purveyor, but where Service froze
And Kipling dried his ink,
Ken K. tossed his awkward shoe.
Oh, baby, do not mourn.
Cassady and Kerouac,
Burroughs and Ginsburg, too,
Await him yonder in the blue,
Where nobody is torn
Because they can't come back.
Me, I had an Irish bud
Who once punched Ken in the nose
And scuffled on his porch in sunlight.
That's the kind of Ken of crude delight
I knew; it wasn't over rambling prose
But the shedding of blood
Over a daughter's affection.
When you get right down
To what a writer's all about,
It's all about...the rout
Of human detection.
Secrets all over town:
Ken was a bully, now he's not
Around to beat the phrase
Or stomp the Oregon rages
Or laud his own damp pages.
He has gone and bought
The farm; let him blaze...


©2001