I was hip starting nine years ago today
with my Caulfield buzz cut
and pillbox of mind-benders and rear-enders
thumbing up to a drifter’s hippie college saga of misadventures
drifting from my ivy league dropout mentor’s reading lists
to a clown’s mindless drug-fueled gag bag red alert
I flew from the nameless trenches of metropolitan geekdom
to being the master of my rural universe beyond
the starving pavement pacing with eye baggage
and gaunt open microphone ineptitude
screaming in a smoky nightclub to tourists
ravings of my boob-tube past complete with
non-sequiturs and needless black Woody Allen frames
exploding in whimsical verses set to the
tune of vintage Herb Alpert brass
Kicked out of the woodsy utopia by the angry villagers
and dropped back into suburban purgatory
my metabolism slowing, my ex-girlfriend’s
cardigan high-lighting my ghastly flabby bulges
regaling the teeny boppers with tales of life
on the road, a nostalgic wad of ectoplasm
full of wistful memory serum complete
with tadpoles swimming in the burned-out
cerebral rot
The hospital room is well lit and the medicine
has dulled the crying out for my long-ago
happy pills for the mind to stop and nestle
in quirky oblivion
the 13th street downtown loneliness,
quirk-induced marathons in the northern woods
All long numbed out of conscious memory
Chapbooks strewn about this bed
dying with a tremendous beard, a plastic
porkpie hat with the phrase “On Top Again”
and the California sunlight peering in
from the windows and baking my
baggy pants intrepid heroic tramp body
slowly for the coffee house in the sky.
