“Just Like The Jones’” by Gerard Sarnat

“You walk into the room

With your pencil in your hand

You see somebody naked

And you say, who is that man?

You try so hard

But you don’t understand

Just what you’ll say

When you get home

Because something is happening here

But you don’t know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?”

-Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965

Thirteen years later, no Village loft chatterer,

charismatic Big Daddy Jones knows ‘xactly who he is,

father and savior, power broker and preacher, molester and killer,

Jim’s communal now dystopian Peoples Temple relocated south,

snuggled in a self-referential Guyanan jungle town.

Where no one but the bosses lived well.

Where kids’ stomachs went empty.

Where misbehavers got stuffed in plywood box torture holes.

Where cult members attempting to flee were drugged.

Where paranoid armed thugs patrolled the compound 24/7.

Where Red Brigades ensured all orders were obeyed.

When Congressman Ryan and troubled parents

flew in to see for themselves, they were gunned down

by loyalists who exhorted a thousand followers

to drink the Kool-Aid which passed as mass suicide…

In the eighties I ran clinics in Oakland and San Francisco

which offered health services to traumatized families

plus a few survivors of that Jonestown Massacre.

Cared for a comatose genius copycat teen-chemist

whose breath reeked that same telltale Guyanan almond stench.

Despite drilling burr holes to let out the pressure,

the stressed boy also died of cyanide

after his cortex splattered the ER ceiling.

Decades past, I still can’t get rid of

that sick Rommel Goering Hitler stink.

(Gerard Sarnat lives in the Bay Area. He is widely published; his book Homeless Chronicles will be in print in 2009. He may be reached at gsarnat@aol.com.)