A poem for tea heads
I sit in Lees. At 11:40 PM with
Jimmy the pusher. He teaches me
Ju Ju.
Hot on the table before us
shrimp foo yong, rice and mushroom
chow yuke.
Up the street under the wheels
of a strange car is his stash—The ritual.
We make it. And have made it.
For months now together after midnight.
Soon I know the fuzz will inter-
rupt will arrest Jimmy and
I shall be placed on probation.
The poem
does not lie to us. We lie under its
law, alive in the glamour of this hour
able to enter into the sacred places
of his dark people, who carry secrets
glassed in their eyes and hide words
under the roofs of their mouth.
From Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners, edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad, and Robert Dewhurst © 2015 John Wieners Literary Trust, Raymond Foye, Administrator. Reprinted with the permission of The John Wieners Literary Trust.
John Wieners
John Wieners lived on the periphery of several movements during his lifetime—the Beats, the Black Mountain School, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance—and was granted cult status in the poetry community.