The Doors of Perception

My father leapt on stage at the Hollywood Bowl

to grab drum and cymbal sticks

from a star—he wanted to be

a star, a door, a Door. White. Security

thugs dragged him off

John Densmore. He saw doors everywhere, he saw Doors

everywhere—at the Whisky,

the Beanery, the Magic Mountain fest—and

in primary colors

in Windward, Oakwood, or North of  Rose. He wanted

to forget war in Venice, to be a door in Venice

and face the faux canals.

Later, he flew to Paris to pay homage to the Door who died

with a head of Alexandrian hair.

He carried huge pale poppies

to the “Poets’ Corner” in the Père Lachaise,

to this stranger under a cream coffin

door nailed shut. He said, Break on through.

He put a poppy in his pocket

like a receipt,

and chased daylight till he landed

in LA, saw a wave of  white

stars rippling

on the Pacific on new moon nights,

when the ever-present rust cloud was blown out to sea.

He found a motel room door, particle door, and shut it

on all that he owned

for fifty years. He lived there, adding up primary colors,

hour to hour in Bliss Consciousness—

crossing his legs on the bed, letting electric snow

hush the TV. Hush

gunfire and

blood. He forgot his father’s father’s Cabo Verde

and let himself   be Italian there—

a different kind of   Venetian—because who he really was was

too close to Black.