Lawrence Ferlinghetti takes a final bow
9.9 + 2 reasons why

Ferlinghetti Didn't Recognize Me
4/29/2019 Con/Jur/d
There was the time, dig,
a substitution was made.
Spent the day working at
CityLights, man, North Beach
and we lived the not-so-secret
dream to connect, to become a part,
to be a servant to the lineage, poets,
artists, madmen, and a friend who
never asked me back, said “I
gotta do, so you want to fill
in be part of the bop, the
boring boring once you
‘ve been in it a while,
day-to-day grind?”
and I said “MAN,
hella-hella-way-
cool” and they
sd without
referenc-
ing
Black Mountain College, once,
“Never ever say that sh*t again.”
And so there I was fumbling
with the system, old-old-school;
kept wondering when they would
drop the abacus on me saying,
“We don’t do calculators here;
because the AI war will be lost.
And we don’t want them sending
their drones back in time to mess -
up a good thing,” when who should
walk in but Lawrence Monsanto
Ferlinghetti, and he says, “Are you
new?” Just like that, as if he didn’t
know his own store, as if he
couldn’t see the faded
scars on my finger
tips from my cut -
ups and razor
phase.
Or all the times
becoming the Best-Poet
possible led to irresponsible
disreputable unethical behavior,
eventually delivering me newborn
on the left-coast and so I sd,
after too long a hesitation,
in a whisper laden with
discontent, “I suppose
so.” and he said,
I swear he said,
“That makes
sense.”