Ismael Garay A Prayer Rolling in the Clouds For Allen Ginsberg Pt. 1 This poem speaks of love because I can’t. The moonlight sonata and all of us high, all of us in tears, all of us floating and gone and out of our minds inside this vast expanse of jazz and sky. The days keep running away from me and I am lost in the holes of the sun, the wounds in your eyes, and the dry wells in our souls, and I am high right now on a literal and lateral and spiritual level, and I plan to get higher than the soul strings of Hendrix touching the sky until I crash into a rolling cloud and then become soul and ¼ dove and ¼ of the Lord’s prayer and ¼ whisky on the rocks and I’ve never been too good at fractions, so I’ll be ¾ of a broken heart and half a tear, I’ll be a sacrifice of spirit or the very cries of Christ chanting in the garden in despair inspired in spirit in spite of death, and I’ll be ¼ Ginsberg but only in beard, I’ll be half a human being and the rest of me shall be this poem. Pt. 2 This song is for every tired angel trying to fly, to fuck to float and still remain holy and free. I am counting the tears that fall from my broken cigarette, the moon lies in soft tones and the women wait untouched, sick of bathing in beer- If we still believed we’d probably pray, but God wont hear our songs of devotion, he brings eternal grace and nothing more, the holy spirit hangs on with light broken wings. The melodies are still in a childhood haze as the sober bands continue playing acid jazz, and the Ochs and aches and ashes of our last cigarettes seem to light our paths as we try and find our way home. Pt. 3 This song belongs to lost angel-buddhas sleeping under hollow bridges where the L.A. river flows (flowed), this song is for my brothers wasted weary and roaming the infernos of Dante and drugs and downtown L.A., for my brothers drowning in the back alleys and bars in Bukowski and childhood dreams, for those still aching for Van Gogh’s summer starry sky, this song is for Van Gogh’s earlobe and the earlobe’s whore, for Rimbaud’s Africa and amputated legs, for the hardon under my black coat and backpack, and this song came to me just now sleepless and lonely on a bus rolling across the desert plains and staring out a window while reading Ginsberg and drinking red wine and virgin sky, the bodies sleep in silence on the highways, the seagulls sleep calmly under the crashing waves. Pt. 4 This poem lives because I feel. I await an apology of light, an apocalypse in my eyes as I sit back tired drunk and sore- no lights in sky, no pictures in mind only my thirsty ache for resurrections, for an answer, for the church bells to ring, for that last delicate slow dance of the moon, tears in the clouds and death lies all around me in a shroud, this poem is for you and all other dancers spinning in a sad sonata ecstasy with one foot steeped in madness. This poem speaks of love because I can’t. And the dancers no longer slow dance on the winding roads, and I’ve left it all behind, only me and these scattered blue wave thoughts falling onto this paper with the grace of a wet dream. This poem lives because I feel. Pt. 5 I am an angel playing my gold harp in the void, don’t you see me all lonely in heaven? I am a broken mirror where the skin breathes falsely, a contradiction in Whitman’s gray beard- and I am unwilling to repent. Don’t you wanna be pure like me? Don’t you wanna be sanctified? Don’t you believe in anything? Wont you make strange verses of my soul, wont you make me into a poem, into one of Zimmerman’s songs? I’ve been given one more cosmic night to cry, to pray, to love you deeply or to make this poem longer, to hear echoes in a bar or watch the moths dance around the sacred light, to hear the crickets’ endless mantras or the ceremonies of the cicadas- they are ceremonies of love, and the ceremonies last all night. Pt. 6 This song is my last drink on a poem stained with confusion and self-centered sadness, lacking compassion because I am not, as I supposed I was, a Bodhisattva in East L.A., I’m just a hung over angel of jazz, a poetry prophet spouting the dharma under a bo tree in Lincoln Heights. I am only a broken gypsy     strumming a guitar on Olvera Street wishing I had the soul     of the mariachi’s sad trumpet, I am only a prayer     rolling in the clouds a wound in God’s soul     dropping teardrops in your cups of wine and now I’m only waiting to die in the white sands of my mind, and everything shall be eternal and confused. Pt. 7 This poem speaks of love because I can’t. the moonlight sonata and all of us high, all of us in tears, this poem lives because I feel. I am soul-searching but soulless in my empty-mirrored sky, I am the rhythm unfelt running down your shoulders, a scattered dream watching the blue melt away, the blue melt away, melt away, away, and the poetry shall wait as I watch reality slip beneath me under the broken pitchers of beer, and I can only watch as the sacred light begins to fade beneath the horizon. We are in dire need of healing, of God in the morning, of compassion in our cups of coffee, of life in our newspaper flesh- I try to measure the remains of light, the little light that’s left. We are drowning in shadows we never asked for- I demand to drown in love, I am tired of chasing the light. I watch the blue melt away, letting the tears fall where they will as I see the seconds filter from your brown eyes and I smoke one last cigarette on a rooftop and watch as the red lights die out in the distant hills. This poem speaks of love because I can’t. Fall 2000 Written on the road from Guadalajara To Los Angeles after seeing a bus turned Over on a highway in Sonora, Mexico.