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.”