poem for The Kid

Ed. Note: This poem was written in the early 1970's on a cold winter night in Buffalo, New York, right before my one, and only, abortion. It is being posted here now, for the first time, 40 years after the procedure, in light of the current debate about legalized abortion...

poem for The Kid

Kid
everything comes of like burlesque
these days and I feel like a
gypsy who can’t tell fortunes
I have not found a name.

Kid
it is time that scares me
when I wake up in the middle
of the night
imagining you at twenty
or postcards I might send from los
angeles

Me & The Kid on sunset strip
Me & The Kid in berlin
Me & The Kid on red square
goosing gendarmes along the left bank
The Kid tailgating his way to heaven
The Kid playing chess with revolutions
The Kid on the moon rewriting the alphabet
The Kid on the FBI “Most Wanted” list
robbing banks playing poker with pentagon people
dropping acid in their whiskey sours.
The Kid selling oracles during station identification
The Kid a Galileo counting bald spots on the sun
broadcasting from Jupiter.
one continuous awakening
hands in his pocket going out into the forest
talking like a tree eyes like sunsets over
a mountain hair braided & black a dance
down his spine. a daredevil James Dean
a Rimbaud that never quits.

you’ll probably be a businessman just to spite me
drinking martinis blue chip stock stiff collars and
thin stares a little woman to take care of the laundry
and cook the food.

Kid
now you are the size of my toenail
you don’t even have a spleen
I wish I could throw you up to a new planet.

Kid
you are knocking on the wrong door
you are unborn and insatiable
you are the light in my eyes
when I look through my flesh
I wish I could see you
strapping exuberant bearded
and bent over the sky.
you are seven months short of the journey—
you will have to start
from somewhere else.

(c) jayne lyn stahl

This poem will be published in an upcoming "Outriders Poetry Anthology," edited by Max Wickert, along with poems by Allen Ginsberg, and other notable poets who passed through Buffalo, New York, and left their impressions not merely in the snow, but in the consciousness of those who followed