Dango

Not To Truck a Word

Like Kerouac not allowing them to truck a word
on his holy scrawled spool of written reason,
and rhyme with rhythm I am here to protect
my own vision and hard won lucid pome of the moment
method of nonforgetting for alcoholics, schizophrenics
and other forgetful sorts, trace a pulling of essence,
and pulling it to me with pins, to the heart of my heart
a book, collection of dead butterflies all neatly mounted,
the colors as bright and iradescent as the moment
they were all madly fluttering, their wings beating, beating
to escape some fate.

visiting Jack

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.

methods by which

Kerouac lubricated writing,
his devil may care highly detailed scribbling about
woods, city and bummy places,
the patterns of the puke stains
on dirty tiled floors...
treasuring the excrement and detritus
of the city and turning it into
sculpted narrative hamburg patties where
self referential sad men
pass days in lust with jazz
and pills, demented women
who have taken pity on or have for the thrill of it,
have in some way themselves
become scrambled in the American blender.

Though at first i resist just as one
resists anything well trodden, trail worn
just as one resists wearing a brothers outgrown shirts
one gratuitous rebellion against previous
rebellions, rebellions piled sky high,
scars of rebellions probing deeper
I find myself exhilerated by the fast moving
prose which I don`t have to follow
to any logical conclusion,
which I am not bound to cherish or respect
which may in fact suddenly devolve into an
explanation of the methods by which
one may achieve satisfactory masturbation
in a train station lavatory stall.

deadend echoes howl

all those movements and nostalgias San Francisco, punch drunk sailors and beat poets, all those premature nostalgias and meaningless expeditions to the centers of eternity, glorifying of something as natural as atmosphere and sunshine, all you wild cherry pickers of the turbulent stew, americas yester-whirl years of expansion and adverse reaction... lead to lazy chuminess and profound suspicion of the un-warped mind, and a prodigious appetite for crazy sax and drumming (which I admire) and visions of a heaven that are at best illusion, unearthed varients of the birthing song. How to wrest inspiration from the american streets without succumbing naked, to teahead prophets of that unilluminable night?

koan of the drunken poets

Keroac and Whitman meet in a bar in Japan... mama-chan asks `what can I get you?` `None of those tentacled things`, says K. `out of a drunken midnite Hokusai scrawl`, `and some peanuts` adds W.