GEORGIA ON MY MIND
Only one man ever understood me and he didn’t understand me. — Hegel
In my dialects
and dialectical notes
cutting out
night after night
like a split note
burning from a sax
or Beat poem
walking on the sands
of North Beach
composing where
runaway shadows
escape
talking philosophy
with a PHD
fleeing Berkeley
for the free speech
movement,
telling me
about Timothy Leary,
with sunset’s last
warming curled light
on the very blue nettled
sky water sea
before the stars
came out, saying only
when he was high
could he understand me
yet handing me
his monthly salary
from his wealthy parents
who owned factories
race horses and cars
in Latin America
and Germany
told me his ladies
were all guilty
of coquetry
with all their sexy chemistry
who brought him to Hades,
I recite in Latin, Dante
and my poetry on an affair,
it was good to share
having no casualty
casuistry or causality
only with a funny kind
of Southern gentleman’s
refined carnality,
and since he came
from Atlanta
who saw my injuries
and me in a bind
from a bar fight,
so for his being kind
and listening intently
to me
played him,
“Georgia on my mind.”