Update on the Disembodied

Lamont B. Steptoe

Walt Whitman
and Marilyn Monroe
have exchanged vows

Truman Capote
gets beaten with a whip
dressed in gold lame heels
by Lawrence of Arabia

Jimmy Baldwin
has married an angel
who resembles Adonis
but very Arabic looking

Romare Bearden
is teaching collage
to Michelangelo
at jazz brunches

Etheridge Knight
has taken up blues harp
and banjo
and is teaming up
with Bird and Monk

John Kennedy
is writing poetry
while his brother Bobby
is now a stand up comic
taking lessons
from John Belushi

James Dean has
sworn off driving
has finally decided
to have a sex change
'cause he wants to marry
Jack Kerouac

John Dillinger
has given up bank robbing
to become a preacher
wants to repent
for all the killing

Jackson Pollack
is now face painting
at celestial carnivals

Marcus Garvey
still won't live with
white folks

Malcolm X
is spending a lot of time
with Bob Marley
learning how to speak patois
and writing a book
against nuclear war

Martin Luther King
is teaching Ma Barker, Machinegun Kelly
and Geronimo
about nonviolence

Dizzy Gillespie
is diving for pearls
from celestial cliffs

Judas Iscariot
is still homeless
and covered in boils

John the Baptist
is deep into his own
head

Richard Nixon
was last seen naked
and howling at an arctic moon

John Wayne Gacy
has been sentenced to sit
in the front seat
as a test dummy
for high speed crashes
of walls of toxic waste

John Wayne
is trapped on an island
of Amazons
surrounded by Sapphoric sirens
that lure all rescue attempts
into the reefs

Jesus Christ
has gone AWOL (absent without leave)
and is rumored to be headed
to earth with a bible and a boom box
on a spacewave
piloted by Sun Ra