Harmful Dharma Chums
- David Goyette
An affable group of family and friends
Potion for emotion.
In Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, Japhy’s argument
Zarathustra charge the hill,
Harmful Dharma- dipsomania.
sip suds and imbibe with tribal connection.
From malt liquor to merlot, they bottle up
almost every evening, gulping down a lubricant
geared to get them gabbing.
A little drinking to get you thinking.
A measure of gin and juice to jostle the jawbone.
with the Poetic Buddhist busy with his Catholic consumption
of the lifelong last-supper serving of sanguine fluids,
is not MADD enough. Not that it might have helped anyhow.
Dharma is duty, nature, a kind of sacred path
not easily sidestepped, and so determined.
So much so, Japhy joins in the celebration with a little sake,
thus receiving the sacrament of sages and sots alike.
Zarathustra charge to the summit,
to Desolation Peak, Hozomeen Mountain void.
March up majestic with dawn.
March up mad with dusk,
never to make the night of your
exalted angels and seasoned saints.
Those late years of wisdom and
fearless fables forsaken. For what?
Pabst Pyramids and port perhaps?
Dad, why sneak off to the neon
navel of the neighborhood?
Aubrey, why abscond as vagabond
to strange streets of starving solitude?
Jack, why rack-up such a sallow tab?
Naked mind, nocturnal Nietzsche,
ideas dissimulated to Jew Hatred.
Ginsberg, your Govinda on your path
to east-meets-west nirvana,
given up for the grails grog.
It almost would have been better
to be betrayed by something,
someone outside yourself. Say, some
social climbing sister to turn prankish
exuberance into punctilious slaughter.