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.