Song composed while visiting Brown on Rue Chartres, New Orleans (1999)

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The water moccasin knows more
about the secrets of baptismal water
than the priest in the cathedral door
talking to the junkie’s vagrant daughter.

Your leg left, still in Vietnam, knows more
about the heart’s unexpected liberation
than the Archangel who flamboyantly adores
those two zeros, perdition and salvation.

So, Brown, this is where you live now
while your leg is domiciled overseas—
ah, to dwell simultaneously in two towns
in hideouts built from visionary syntheses!

As always you’re the Earl of Gimps, the Limper King
planting mines under Uncle Sammy’s fingernails
while the old bastard persists in badmouthing
the transcendent slimeballs rotting in freedom’s jails!