Poem: Pass the basket

I have been dabbling in poetry again, and not just haiku. Here's one I cobbled together, though I admit it is still rough. It shows I have been thinking of Ginsburg and Gary Snyder lately.

...

Pass the basket
& draw on your mothy pockets
with those anesthetized hands;
the cool gift of ungiving.

What gems & fruits
might feed our musicians,
our lost poets, our hoarse sidewalk prophets?
What fuels the awoken spirits
& the half-assed Buddhas, the part-time messiahs?

Judas & Jesus are looking for a cup of coffee outside the bar;
Tanto & the Ranger have been turned away from the Shelter,
walking the streets staying warm with a bottle of Wild Turkey;
Penelope sings for her love in the coffeeshop,
& Ulysses is lost from his crew in the Ponderosa pines.

The empty basket passes for the tithe
to the unbelievers, the pagans, the uncertain übermensch.
While Clark Kent spends his off hours
scratching bad poetry for Lois
who will never read it
because she is out to dinner with an internet-inspired bad date.
And the empty basket pays the bus fare, the gas money,
most of a train ticket back home.

The kids all dream of the Village,
the basket houses full of honest child faces
& the City becomes Montreal, Paris, Austin upon waking.
Through the day they walk on stilts, wear papier mâché masks, picket for Truth--
not knowing what Truth or whose Truth,
just the word like a crisp, Braeburn apple in hand--
& they hold out hats, upturned & empty.

So we pass the basket,
not for the beer or the cuppa,
not for the gas or the tickets,
not for the falafel or dogs,
not for the hotel room or the camping permit;
yearning for full moon silver coins
& the paper to scrawl out the ghosts tucked tightly in our pens and brushes.

...

Inspired, in part, by No Direction Home; also to those with only cars, hotel rooms, and parks to sleep on or in in Flagstaff. May creativity and godliness find multifarious forms and suprising manifestations of painful beauty.