Hemi

[Sigh]

(an ode to James K Baxter)

Hemi's body shat itself
coils spluttered and unwound,
I guess,
snapped like piano wire

Away flew that unfettered ghost
like a drunken swan

I was only four
quite unaware anything had changed
(grieving has an epicentre)
it took me thirty years to attune myself
to a degree where
Hemi's words shattered me

Language shapes reality
more than it describes it
for,
we are interpretive beings

and Hemi
you are my spiritual ancestor
whose plutonium words
hotter than hell
have deepened and expanded
my reality

You galvanized in us a barefoot spirit
a check-point where bull-shit stops
and pulled down the palisade
that we may see beyond.