Happy Birthday Captain Beefheart!

(I saw him at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver during the "Doc at the Radar Station" tour('79?), in fine howling form, playing clarinet, reciting poems. His last words from the stage were "Read Wyndham Lewis! Read Wyndham Lewis! Apes of God! Apes of God!")

sun showers danced like
dye darker green shadows
light on green leaves
played bamboo golden
light organ pipes
wooden 'n' olden
down finickey halls
shadows leaped like lizards scaling
flower eyes trailing random vines
tales that curl-ee-cued
beans that hung green light berries
butterfly's grasp upside down
in pain
lovely in their rapture
golden dust
golden winged eels slither apart
bleeding life's light on to the ground
'n' quiver down golden light
corny little yellow horns blew petals
stem riddles
bees ride fat honey
legged drips
center pulp splinters
her flowered eye
a legend on a rock she scribbles
a dew drop pops
up in the 'sun dawn dance'

don van vliet 1970