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The Day Allen Ginsberg DiedI was reading White Shroud in bed at 5 am,angry at everything, have to get up too early, I’m not in the mood to drive south. Last night at a party a man stripped to display his Krishna and Buddha tattoos over sagging chest flesh. Ginsberg says "I am summoned from my bed to the Great City of the Dead." I don’t want to drive to Albuquerque, am transfixed by the old bag of breath my professor of way gay Beat fame. Cannot get enough of him, sing "Meditation Rock" under my breath. Drag myself from words into the early snowy, blossoming April day. Passing Casinos the day is shallow and motherly as many of my days turn out instead of in. But Allen is already dead and I have no idea. At YesterDave’s eat burgers, drink shakes, see Elvis’ leather jacket and his Cadillac, while Allen is no longer breathing except this humming in me, "Do the meditation, do the meditation Rock." I am poet all day secretly. Make small talk. Buy sandals for my child, this double life I love. A rumor reaches me, the Great Ginsberg is dead. I missed all seventy of his birthdays, but he gave a little birth to me, back in Boston in the Sixties. I try and watch Late Breaking News, snooze off and by morning I’m desperate to know. Could call Goldberg, could call Sagan, carry the uncertain but urgent pregnancy of death. On page three of the Journal two columns I skim. I already know what it says. Allen Ginsberg is not dead but humming me to work. We all have more to do. My darlings are thumbing rides to the Great City of the dead. Ginsberg chants the sights. His is a breath so long it is heard from the Other Side. I am not genius. Am mother with habit for words after thought, when the dishwasher purrs, the man snores, the radio speaks Spanish. Tumbleweed flies kite-high and crazy over the house. I am singing Ginsberg as he sang me Blake in the Seventies in San Francisco, "All the hills echo-ed." Sang me high into the Men’s Bathroom at The Family Dog where the Angels of Light in chorus girl drag showed a leg. I peed among men dressed as women, and I write among women now, my own live song mourns and my dervish breath turns, saddens, and longs. |
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Issue #17, September, 2000 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.