Kerouac
Here are some verbal snapshots
from my day (in no particular order)
inspired by poetry written by
middle aged white men.
#1:
Fingers in her hair
They smell like cocoa butter.
Perhaps I’ll always love her.
#2:
Heard a story once–
Paintings burned in a fire.
Life was never the same.
#3:
I’m sick of reading
poetry by old white men.
Instead, I write my own.
#4:
Said he likes free verse,
Showed me his dingy man cave.
I wrote this for him.
#5:
Green button up shirt
tucked into worn out khakis.
Nevermind this one.
#6:
Lily’s good friend
overdosed on heroin.
Didn’t think it would happen this way.
#7:
Tears fell against my will.
Cried my way out of a midterm.
My face was hot and stinging.
Barely worth a failing grade.
#8:
Stoges in my pocket.
Tried to sell my cigarettes.
Never called them “stoges” before.
#9:
Should I sell them whole
Or in bundles,
Three for two?
Or should I just keep them for myself?
#10:
She always brings it up.
She’s not sure if he likes her.
We all know he does.
#11:
I used to be young.
Flash forward to the summer.
Now, I am so old.
#12:
He reads Satanic books.
He’s a hardcore communist.
Skipped number thirteen.
#14:
What do you say we…
Drop out of college?
We should do some heroin and all become poets.
#15:
This one’s a free verse
because he said he likes it.
We talked about all kinds of things, but mostly we talked books by Kerouac and Dostoevsky, and
I asked about Rilke, too. He’d never heard of Rilke, but he loves Bukowski,
just like everyone else.
In all honesty, Bukowski’s alright.
He’s like Shakespeare
for sad kids who smoke weed and go to concerts
and who am I?
Not so sad, really.
And I don’t like smoking weed, either.
Still, Bukowski’s alright.
I don’t write odes to my furniture or cry about the dust on my mirror.
I ignore my thoughts for months on end.
I don’t write much, anyway.
#16
My friend once told me of her teacher who lost all of her belongings in a fire.
She was an artist, and all of her paintings had been destroyed. How sad. How sad.
We all drink some more whiskey and take another look at our cell phones, how sad.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 