A mild mannered girl,
maybe attractive auburn hair but
no beat, not like Jack, around
the time when his reputation began
to exceed performance, breathless
I ran up the stairs of the apartment complex
looking for his door, and knocking was
greeted by a surly growl
Opening the door, a surprisingly normal guy
apologetic in his best beat manners
handsome in a rebellious mid-30`s
alcoholic way, and there were two others,
one a cat-like girl, maybe good and close
friend of one or the other
And the other was lets see,
dean moriarity or gary snyder
certainly he wasnt all wild and crazy or
particularly talkative so I`m going to say
snyder, and they were planning a fishing trip
in the mountains, I sat on the bed
petite and demur, guess I wasn`t any kind of
beat at all
slowly I took in Jack
and the honor of meeting him
though now at the outset of his sinking, floating
years where the original rebellion was at odds with
the forces of age and gravity
reclining in a deck chair in the kind of old beat
apartment that may exist only in San Francisco,
he asked me a semi-serious question like,
did I think he could keep on writing?
sounded like he was flirting, but also
as if he had things on his mind,
had been possibly drinking
before I arrived, and was now trying to put on
his best collegiate, nice guy face
so envoking compassion, even pity
And though I couldn`t have known
he didn`t have much left
that the last years of his life would be abject
and that indeed he would spend most nights
drunk out of his skull, (oh the advantages of hindsight)
I said something that I hoped would encourage him
I forget and
we wound up playing a kind of mad baseball game
in the room with a mop for a bat
and crumpled paper balls
swinging to the blast of some scratchy trumpet.
