XITRO
for Allen Ginsberg 1926-1997

 

 

I

 

I'm sitting in Tsultrim's kitchen Pagosa Springs looking at a picture you took of her at a table in your kitchen Manhattan clear autumn day thinking how long it's been since you sat in my kitchen Fairbanks in thin winter light  I'm one of your many colorful children spawned from Howl breath spontaneous exuberant misconduct passing original uncensored yelp around Miss Jacobi's Latin class yes I know the pluperfect of amare amaveram amaveras amaverat amaveramus amaveratis amaverant my mind eager for peyote solidities green tree cemetery dawn wine drunkeness over rooftops I am a candle you are the sun


Wanting to plug in and dig the symbiotic intersubjective meta-aleatoric patramorphesis my first peckertrack poems written to you making them into paper airplanes and sending them airmail from open Derby Street parlor window


Looking for North Beach with my surfer buddies Stinson Beach Bolinas Bodega Bay where is this North Beach further north? looking south finding Monterey Jazz Festival seeing you or a lookalike reading in a candlelit art gallery Beatniks that's what these must be Art Ball and me on Dexedrine and Glick Stite
writing copy for Ralph Gleason wide-eyed taking it in licking it up sniffing it out poking about



II

A difficult labor Berkeley Poetry Conference two weeks dinosaurs grazing in pastures of hemp micro-orgasms under an airtight lid færy-dæmon foxfire dynamos bunraku hooded puppeteers all poets Beat Black Mountain and Reed strutting their stuff playing it fast and loose sector Xn relative to Yn a trig question here a Geminian martyrdom there two synthetic a priori approximations but the real you the King of the May recently rearrived with Planet News
even if expelled from Mayakovski's bedroom with a broom stick up your butt

 

I filled vials with violets and grass I made baggies of marigolds and grass I loaded a triangular-shaped bottle with grass and delivered these to various heads announcing "A Party for Allen" you were selected Secretary of the Poets by Charles Olson's decree and the oligarchic consent of Snyder-Duncan-Dorn starchamber poetry politics I underestimated by a hundred how many would attend this bash and in a spot I put out my stash and passed my Stetson


Extracting some bills from your coin purse you started the collection wisely sending Peter Orlovsky with me to the liquor store no telling what scam a mustachioed poet might contrive to pick up some quick cash the wild eyes! the holy yells! you seated in the posture of Milarepa when we return a joint in one hand a glass of wine in one with one you sign your name for the 100 thousandth time with one hand you pat my infant daughter's head Kirsten dead now two years from Aids so young grim pedophile death what is the age of consent?


Always encouraging the young Richard Krech reads a diatribe seated on an antique commode while Lew Welsh swings from the chandelier it is Creeley's remark that everyone should know where the firemen and police are located that clears the place I add up the cost and the cost of the cost = nothing was stolen nothing was broken save for the chandelier