Lawrence Ferlinghetti Not Dying
~ for Charles Lyons, who already knows
Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
He should know, he wrote the poem
“Allen Ginsberg Dying”
And ever since writing that poem
Allen remains larger than life
If you are keeping a candle burning
Rubbernecking on social media,
Looking for updates
Scanning for chatter
Here’s an update:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
He sold his red truck
But he’s not dying
Just wanted to wean himself at last
From the clutch destroying teats
Of San Francisco’s autogeddon
You don’t want me to drive anymore
My family? My bookshop staff?
At 99, the red Ford Ranger
Still in his name &
Doing business as City Lights,
Getting nervous my people?
Afraid I’ll mow down
Half a class
Out on a Chinatown fieldtrip?
Fair enough
I can read a room
His sight is failing
But his vision
Has never been better
Tells son Lorenzo it is time
There’s no room in the Bancroft Library
At Berkeley
For a manual, stick shift
No power steering
No radio
No AC
No fucking around
Red pickup truck
Pull it out of the garage
Slap a for sale sign on it
In front of the apartment
A pound of flesh?
Here’s 2,960 lbs.
And a quarter century of history
A truck to move books and canvasses
Back and forth, up and down
3rd Street to Evans Avenue
North Beach to the Shipyard
In Bayview Hunters Point
Double parked on Columbus
Trips to Big Sur and that town
North of Muir Woods
(Instagram hasn’t ruined these places,
Over-population has)
Nancy Peters described him
Driving it
“He drove it like a boat”
When asked if the radio was removed
Too many break-ins?
The answer is more poetic
When you are a poet, painter, publisher
Buying a pick-up truck at 75
You no longer listen to others
You listen to your own muse
No bells & whistles here
A pickup truck with no radio,
Is that even legal?
Don’t go looking to see
If the radio station was last on KPFA
There is no radio there
Just a large black void
Heed it well, Ye Pantheists!
The “Watch for Cyclists” sticker
On the side mirror
Hunters Point Shipyard
On the front windshield
Love is Love on the bumper
Key to the City?
He received a tree to the City
But he isn’t dying
He doesn’t need monuments
In steel or concrete
An olive tree
Is a thing of beauty
Each one a living monument
Quoted in the Guardian
About the tree – go read it
His son also an arborist
Appreciated that too
Snuck him out of his apartment
On a quiet weekday
To visit the tree together
Summer, 2019
Across from Via Ferlinghetti
Sitting on the bench together
In front of Gelato Classico
A father and son
San Francisco’s first family
A visit to the tree
Without the cameras rolling
At 100
The Conspiracy of Beards
Serenaded him at his window
Singing Leonard Cohen and happy birthday
And Oh! Our Captain walked
Without cane to the window
In all white
Waving back with Red scarf –
A gift from Mauro
A nod to Jack Hirschman
With Papal undertones –
See!
Such a clever trickster
But Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
Did you notice the flowers on the table
In that video shot from inside
Elaine Katzenberger in the scene too
A bouquet of olive branches
Given to the family two days before
By employees of Public Works
The Conspiracy of Beards
Later singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”
In Kerouac alley that joins
City Lights with Vesuvio’s
Poets posting poems on walls
Emailed from all over the world
Kerouac, high, high above this scene
Jots down in his pocket notebook
That across Columbus,
The tip of the cross is Saroyan Place,
With a bar, Specs, at the top
But goofball drunk up there
Asks if we want any red wine
And spills while making the grand gesture
Shows up on our red faces as tears
Several hundred of us got to experience
The greatest moment of Ferlinghetti at 100
Listening to grown-ass adults of all ages
All sexes, certain or fluid
Sing with tears
Sing us all to tears
Men in black hats singing “Hallelujah”
Soon it will be like Woodstock
Everyone was there,
It felt that way
Milling about North Beach
Replacing car chase scenes
With song and poetry
On the streets of San Francisco
The month of March, 2019 was magical
But Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
He’s published a book, ‘Little Boy’
Not a final will and testament
Not his final book, just his latest book
As Mauro respectfully noted
At the poetry tribute in the main library
Emceed by Neeli Cherkovski
The official host of the event,
A great poet, and local too
Hopefully one of our next
Poet laureates of our peaks
Bernal Heights, one of our famed hills
Has a worthy bard
Just because LF is the first writer
To pull-off his latest novel
With a hundred-year arc to it
Doesn’t mean he’s dying
‘Little Boy’ is part retrospective:
He has several generations to speak to
Got battered on the beaches of Normandy
But quietly arrived
To the shores of San Francisco
By ferry from Oakland
After crossing the country by train
Bag over his shoulder, headed up Market
Like so many of us that arrive here
With private hopes
That we’ll make our mark too
Hoping to create the new --
City Lights Bookstore & Publishers
Waiting for its hero to plant his seed
At 261 Columbus Avenue
Now the most important building
in San Francisco,
In America
Landmark no. 228
Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
‘Little Boy’ was no swan song
He wrote as bold as he ever has
He didn’t put anyone down
He just called it for what it is
Over-population a problem
Said what we’re all thinking
Something for everybody in there
Painters, poets and publishers
Small business owners
Environmentalists
Socialist leanings for all countries
If it could be run without corruption
Wars fought over resources
Time for a global inventory
Though he didn’t use those words
Placing us all under arrest
In Giada’s documentary
‘Lawrence: A Lifetime in Poetry’
For our complacency
Our failure to protect the environment
And if you want to know what
That badge says on his Western hat
Join next year’s annual literary walkabout
And if you pass the test,
Last the full day,
The tongues will loosen
It was not the worst sin
To hop out of an Uber or Lyft
In front of City Lights on March 24, 2019
But for those setting out
On foot at sunrise
Across from 706 Wisconsin at 7:06 A.M.
From the old family home
Walking from Potrero Hill to North Beach
Getting to see where Rexroth once lived
Just two doors down
The cinder block housing at 5 Turner Terrace
Where Peter and Lafcadio Orlosky once lived
(Where Ginsberg and Kerouac once loved,
With others)
Still stands for now
See it on IG @allenginsbergofficial
And even a stop in front of
Brautigan’s apartment on Mississippi
Still an hour away from
The new mighty Moloch of the West
The Salesforce Tower
Ginsberg would love that thing
Phallus? Land ho!
Gleaming and glistening,
And unlike the sinking, tilting, wilting
Millennium tower
(even the sidewalk and street trees
are slanted and jacked up)
Where the Millennium only
Fumbled with its tip in the Bay mud
Salesforce puffed the cigarette
After a pounding performance
Tweeting
“Bedrock baby”
But for those who had already walked
And talked and recited poetry for 5 miles
Or just walked along in silence
It was worth a chuckle or two
To see folks exit their Uber at City Lights
But at least they knew to come
On March 24, 2019
What about the rest of the City?
Where were they?
Where are they?
What City do they occupy
In their mind?
We won’t call it
A literary ‘pilgrimage’ anymore
What a loaded word that is
And words matter
Annual Literary “Walkabout” it now is
(his own word, in Giada’s book)
‘Writing Across the Landscape’
With Matthew Gleeson too,
Referencing pilgrims no longer
Just a catchy phrase
We aren’t religious pilgrims looking
To start wars against non-believers
Politically correct?
Morally, and ethically correct
Lawrence Ferlinghetti Isn’t Dying
He’s rowing,
With just a little assistance
From son Lorenzo
On his machine
Next to his bed
Later that night
Asleep
He pulls an old row boat
Onto the sand
Behind the South End Rowing Club
He’s going for a little row
You can see him there
Crossing slowly back and forth
Just offshore at Aquatic Park
His tan jacket visible even at night
Which hat?
Greek fisherman’s?
The Charlie Chaplin bowler?
The San Gregorio cap?
Statue of Liberty mask?
He might be restless
But he’s not dying
No, he’ll never die now
Saint Lawrence has
Written, Painted, Published, Translated
Edited, Corresponded, Conspired,
Flux’ed, Dada’d, Cacophonied, Acted,
Agitated, Instigated & Advocated
Bicycled, Walked, Talked, Spoken
Fluxare’d, Independent business’d
Streamed his consciousness
Inspired and defended
Freedom of expression
But he’s no Saint
Just ask Nadja
He’s lying low but he’s not dying
He’s riding his bike through Golden Gate Park
To the ocean
He’s watching the great Chinese dragon
Creep out of an Adler Alley cellar
He’s letting our two selves speak
All night under the cypress tree
Without making love
He’s too busy studying underwear
Women’s underwear holds things up
Men’s underwear holds things down
Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom
Someone has escaped his/her/they underwear
May be naked somewhere
He’s studying the hidden door palimpsest of himself
In Peru and Chile
He’s starting out
He’s too busy approaching the state of pure euphoria
He’s washing his face in Big Sur creek water
Splitting wood
While Kerouac watches with envy
Hungover still in his sleeping bag in the bushes
Swarthy man will outlive us all
Snyder & Ferlinghetti proved Kerouac right
Another visionary victory for Ti Jean
Kerouac’s brilliance still on display
Neal Cassady was a Roman candle
Gary & Lawrence the old sages
Jack saw atop a mountain,
Down in a canyon
And ‘Memory Babe’ by Gerald Nicosia
Is hands down
The best Kerouac biography
Though the Sampas family
And big publishing
Continue to blacklist it
Long live Gerald Nicosia
A poet
He reviewed Cherkovski’s
Biography of Lawrence
Way back when it came out
Can everyone
Just please try to get along?
Lawrence is reminding us
That before there was Gary Snyder
There was Kenneth Rexroth
Writing about Nature
No jab:
Compliments to both poets
He’s busy needling us about Pound
Promoting the wide-open language poets
Over the word-problem poets:
Mathematicians in sheep’s clothing
(my words, not his)
He’s at the opening reception
At the Harvey Milk Photo Center
Summer 2019, at 100 years
Stating clearly for all to hear
His thoughts about Nagasaki:
I came I saw I wept
KPFA’s Dennis Bernstein
His head was exploding
Getting his mic as near as possible
To broadcast this
Son Lorenzo stepping back
Smiling to see his father at 100
Deliver the verbal punch
When just an hour earlier
He had asked his Dad
With no pressure
What do you think Dad?
The sun is shining
You feel up to it?
An hour later
A new updated summary
In just six words
On how he became an instant Pacifist
But you arrived fashionably late
And missed the whole thing
Father & son already headed back
To the 2nd floor apartment
Dumbass doesn’t even begin to describe
The regret & self-loathing
This old Italian isn’t dying
He’s not waiting for Godot
Or for his glorious sentence on earth
To be finished
He’s too busy reading Apollinaire by the Rogue River
He’s too busy reading again
His Populist Manifestos
He won’t wait for us to open our doors
He’s seen too many minds of all generations
Destroyed by boredom at poetry readings
He’s in Dublin at Bloomsday
Following Leopold Bloom through the streets
The wandering ad man
Looking out for Stephen Deadulus
Or a glimpse of Joyce himself
Thinking about Leopold’s daughter
And his own
But fixating on her mother in bed
I’ll join her between the sheets
Enter her scream of consciousness
Anytime
He’s back up in the Wisconsin Street attic
Being filmed for that USA Poetry series
In his literary crow’s nest
Looking down at the City’s low skyline
Through the glass ends of beer bottles
Like the admiral of SS City Lights
And quietly speaking to himself:
I would still give up this room again
To Lorenzo and Julie
And the house to Kirby
If I had to do it all over again
Says the poet
In his Potrero Hill garret
Renting ever since,
Like so many others:
A true San Franciscan
He’s headed back to Moscow in the wilderness
Segovia in the snow
Lamenting that John Lennon didn’t live long enough
To give us the mad eternal answer
He’s listening to Neil Young on the juke
Or returning to Paris with Pissarro
He’s rereading his poem “Endless Life”
To see if it still holds up
He’s still here in North Beach
Watching two scavengers in a truck
Two beautiful people in a Mercedes
He’s checking the box scores
Hopeful the Giants might take
The last wildcard spot
Wondering when we’ll start reading his
‘Baseball Canto’ during the 7th inning stretch
At the ballpark
A new tradition
Or another stop
On the Literary Walkabout
Or on Opening Day
Read it aloud among the
Moms and Dads
And the gloved-hands of
Their American youth
Or at the least
Outside on the sidewalk
At the Willie Mays statue
On opening day each year
He’s hanging out with Nancy Peters
Oh to be a fly on that wall!
He’s looking forward to another
Glass of red with Jack Hirschman
Another meal cooked by Aggie
It was her idea to have
The Conspiracy of Beards
Serenade him on his birthday
Sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”
His son was there with him decades ago
When he wrote “Baseball Canto”
Together at Candlestick
“Dad scribbling away in his notebook”
Sock it to him Tito!
Dad, hey Dad,
Pass the Cracker Jacks, Dad
He’s still studying
The Changing Light at San Francisco
Painting sunlight in his studio
At the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard
He’s at Rena Branston gallery
At 1275 Minnesota
Checking out the installation
Loving the shift of the art world
From downtown Geary Street
To the Dogpatch
He’s stopping for lunch or dinner
With friends at The Ramp
His portrait already hangs there
Tucked-off by the door to the kitchen
Am I the only one
Who notices these things?
If he arrived today on that ferry
He would live in Bayview Hunters Point
Open a bookshop on 3rd St.
In the face of the slings of
Gentrification
Sell worn copies of ‘Soul on Ice’
Publish spoken word
Support Word Café on 3rd
Women writers of color & culture
Attend the great events
At the Bayview Opera House
Like the re-broadcast
Of Obama’s 1st inauguration
Every neighborhood
Deserves its own bookstore
One email to the populace:
Friends, donate some books to the new
Bayview Bookshop
Shelves filled in a weekend
Paperbacks 50 cents
Hardcovers a dollar
Rising tides should raise all ships
He hasn’t watched
‘The Last Blackman in San Francisco’
But he’s heard about it
Meets the other rower at night
Under the Golden Gate
Shouts out across the shadows
Pitching about among the wave sparkles
“That empty storefront at 3rd & Palou
Would make a nice paperback bookshop
Has a balcony above, too.”
Each doffing caps at the other
He’s busy realizing that ‘Pity the Nation’
Must have been written with Trump in mind
It’s trending on social right now
He’s still scanning the sky for the birds of peace
Still nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima
He’s thinking of maybe staying inside
So that when the new night fog floats in
He does not drift out
Anchorless upon the ocean
He was still, there, very still
Just now, for a moment
Thinking about your hyacinth hair
Your naiad air, your fine nude legs in sun
In olde Europa
He’s thinking about Proust and his madeleine
About afternoons on the Grande Jatte
He made it clear in ‘Little Boy’
The state of his union
Remains strong,
Not interested in your
Little blue pill
Thank you very much
Oh, Henry Miller,
Is that a blush?
Beyond San Francisco’s white wood houses
He’s visiting a poet’s sun-bleached cottage
On the far lagoon
With its wind-torn Little Mesa
And remembers to remove the highway sign
On his way out
Always willing to do his part
In his sleep, murmuring “tourists go home”
Yet again
But not referring to literary tourists
Welcoming European families
Any and all families
Middle aged parents
Standing out front
Trying to explain to their teenagers why they
Travelled so far from Eastern Europe
To San Francisco
It’s here, right here, this man, this bookshop:
Step inside
The San Francisco Poetry & Jazz renaissance
Yes, yes
He smiles in and out of sleep
That was the joy
That was the great joy
That will remain forever
He’s thinking that
Dada would have liked a day like this
He’s looking at the pictures
Of the crowded climbers
On the spine of Mount Everest
He’s busy with his next poem
Ready to paint one more canvas
Not of the Blue Marble of December 7, 1972
But the sad conclusion
The line at the top of Mount Everest
Taken 47 years later in 2019
By climber Nirmal Purja
Fruit flies in a petri dish
Forced to the edges of the Earth
Stepping over discarded oxygen tanks
And frozen corpses
Exquisitely preserved
He’s painting nudes with a few friends
At his studio in Bldg. 101
He’s not dying, he’s having fun
He’s wondering what you think about ‘Little Boy’
He won’t wait forever
He’s not holding his breath
He’s awaiting perpetually and forever
For a new rebirth of wonder,
And for a few more sales
He’s busy painting more signs
For the bookshop
He’s still wishing the basement
At City Lights
Didn’t extend below the sidewalk
He’d love to plant
A row of street trees out front
Take a closer look
The next time you’re down there
You can hear the click of feet above
He’s thinking back to when he had
To hand Jack Kerouac the phone
Patron Saint of cats (dogs too)
In the tiny space below the basement stairs
With the news that Kerouac’s dear cat
Had died
He’s looking across the basement
Thinking back to when
Ginsberg
Burroughs
Cassady
Were breathing the same air
Diane di Prima
Upstairs on the main floor
Sitting at the table
Writing down the addresses
Of all the poetry magazines
He’s reading in the City Lights office
Above the store
Sending Allen another telegram
He’s on his way to Big Sur
But stopping to visit friends
In San Gregorio
At the General Store
Pausing to look to the East
Route 84
Where Ken Kesey’s old mountain house
Still sits in La Honda, across the small creek
Celebrated by Hunter S. Thompson,
Tom Wolf in the Electric Cool-Acid Test,
Mountain Girl, the Grateful Dead
The Hells Angels (founded in ‘Frisco)
Neal Cassady juggling hammers in the redwoods
Furthur parked there, waiting to see
If you are on the bus
Or off
He’s not dying
And he’s most def on the bus
But he’s not a Beat
He’s running a business
Though he says it is a Celtic symbol
He’s raising his arms to the morning sun
Found him there again
Through the trees in the canyon
At the cabin
The City Lights logo
On your baseball cap
Your canvas bag
Your bookmarks & postcards
Or bumper sticker philosophies
Kind of like a peace symbol
But actually a binary or
Non-binary identifying person greeting the sun
Thinking about what to do
With this day before us
Don’t mind the wandering burro
Yes, Dada would have liked a day like this
Fluxus too
And the San Francisco mime troupe
Or the cacophony society
Or the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
No, Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
He’s thinking about getting another hat
He’s off traveling but he’ll be back
Moved here to be close to wine country
He’s outback
Using Leopold Bloom’s outhouse
While reading the ‘Semaphore’
Plenty of material to wipe with
Everyone moved to North Beach years ago
To capture the magic
And now believe it’s too loud
In old North Beach
Though they too once came for the cheap beer
And Carol Dota’s tatas
The Hungry “I” for intellect
Historic name of coffeehouse
Now the hungry phonetic eye
For nude female forms, or male
Out of respect for our aging-in-place seniors
Please keep the racket to a low din, thanks
Ear trumpets now displacing
The Birth of the Cool
He’s back in Brescia now
Trying to get even with the police in Italy
For arresting him
When he was just trying to find
A piece of family history
Or he’s back in the arms of his caretaker
In Paris,
Being held on the balcony
There is a parade down below
Or he’s upstairs in a meeting with Nancy Peters
At the old Grant Avenue publishing office
Look for the hand sculpture on the sidewalk
Beat into the ground – Poets corner
He’s having another surrealist dream
And he’s not rushing to come back
He’s checking the mail and getting another letter
From one of a hundred of those souls
Worth saving
Discovering this beacon they call City Lights
Many tell a similar story:
Receiving a written reply
From Lawrence himself
He’s up early today, heading out
To circumambulate Mt. Tamalpais
To honor Snyder, Ginsberg & Whalen
The other Bay Area annual literary walkabout
He’s not going too far
At least not until the next US President
Is a woman of color
Can’t even believe Men are running -
Enough already
He’s waking from that same dream again
Something about the San Francisco poetry police
A courtroom
The number six, a gallery, on Fillmore
“Howl” and “Berry Feast”
Gary Snyder is arrested instead
For even alluding to Nature
And earlier cultures
Loses the trial
And has been in jail ever since
Far from Kitkitdizze
Must go visit him again soon
San Quentin, so close,
Maybe he’ll row there,
Gary would appreciate that
Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
No, no
He’s on an autobus on Avenida Reforma
Destination signs:
BELLAS ARTES INSURGENTES
Exactamente
Just what’s needed:
Insurgent Arts
Poesia Insurgente
He’s on another bus to Veracruz
An adobe house by the highway,
No roof and one wall,
Covered with words:
La Luz Del Mundo
He’s in Baja in March, 1969
Got up in the 8 a.m. fog
Now addressing the sea
Shaking fists
It’s there to read in his journals
"You, intoner of Nothing!
You, answer of Nothing
With Nothing!"
He’s getting in heated discussions
With other panelists at the Naropa Institute
Michael McLure and William Burroughs too,
Ginsberg, is trying to bring it back around
If you can just be still a moment
Stand in front of any apartment building
In the Town & the City where you live
Written from July, 2019 - August, 2020
Poem begun on a cross-country flight
SF – New England
Poem concluded in his red pickup truck
In a basement garage near 3rd & Palou
In Bayview-Hunters Point,
Where most writing occurred,
Along with a cabin
In the Santa Cruz Mountains
Large sections of LF’s own poems appear here
A lot with quotes, some without
The little red truck has marked itself safe
From the CZU lightning complex fires
August 31, 2020
And if you are still enough
If you want some reassurance
That he is still here among us
Just listen closely
If the timing is right
After that car and this car
Have moved on
During the momentary lull
You’ll hear some sounds
The sounds of him
On his rowing machine
Or the sound of a turning page
Or the sound of writing
The guy is no dummy
He lived this long
Riding his bike in the City
And rowing in the Bay
And swimming at the Y
But at this age one misstep
And you’re talking hip replacement
Or a simple cold
Turns into pneumonia
Not to mention a global pandemic
He’s still
Stocking the bookstore
He’s moving boxes of books
Canvasses in his truck
He’s writing a telegram
To Greta Thunberg
Greeting her at the beginning
Of a great career
Asking when he’ll get the manifesto,
But she is so cool, this kid
So beat,
She has a huge mural in her honor now
Above 414 Mason in the Tenderloin
Though she doesn’t approve of idolatry
Me? Sorry, guilty as hell
I don’t believe in Gods & Goddesses
I believe in other myths
In men and women
What’s left if you can’t idolize?
I’d rather follow a real person -
Who had to walk this earth
He’s not really living above the bookshop
Like Houghton Mifflin stated
Inside the back jacket of ‘Little Boy’
It was a nod to George Whitman
Living above Shakespeare and Company
And to keep his whereabouts
A North Beach mystery
I loved that shit,
Even McSweeney’s
Christopher Monks
And 826’s Dave Eggers
Had to smile at that one
He’s not dying
He’s covering his tracks
Like a coyote trickster
Don’t track me down
If you need to find me
Just read my poems on the street
Wherever you live
That is where I am
Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
He’s about to cut the interview short
If you ask another silly question -
Just ask The New York Times
He’s more than happy to answer this question
From the Urban Forester,
Standing at the foot of his bed
In supplication, forester’s hat in hands:
When you moved to 706 Wisconsin Street
Did you know that Rexroth used to live
Two doors down at 690 Wisconsin?
The answer to be revealed each year
On Ferlinghetti Day, March 24
If you pass the test
From dawn to dusk
He blasted out
The answer
With gusto
The Urban Forester
Got the green light for another question
Turned into more of a confession:
Explaining that buying his truck
Was at first
An intellectual exercise
But that after a year
Really enjoying the truck, physically --
Well, how to put this,
Leaning even closer,
With respect, furtive
“I kind of feel like we’re sharing a lover”
The reply from Mr. Ferlinghetti
(blank stare or hearty guffaw?)
To be revealed at next year’s
Annual Literary Walkabout,
At the end of the day
At Specs or Vesuvios,
If you have passed the test
Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
He’s still making dreams come true
For others
Still publishing
He’s got a side hustle or two
He’s not dying
He’s not thinking about
The Green Street Mortuary
Marching Band
It’s too late to go back now
To buy that Apple stock
5k in 2000, 1 million in 2020
But he’s left us the makings
Of another great Gold Rush:
His paintings
A painter since before his first poems
They are selling fast
For the great era of Ferlinghetti love
Buy them now for 10-50K
At Rena Bransten Gallery
Or find yourself on the outside
Looking in
In just a few short, quick years
Mark the tape on this one
This is not a threat
It’s a fucking admonition
A Union-backed counselling
With or without your Weingarten Rights
No groveling in your beer
20 years from now
When I say
Dumbass, I told you so
He’s not dying
He sees the White Bicycles of protest
Even if the cyclists were stoned
And blew through the Stop Signs
And the bikes now all picked apart
By the scrap metal poets
He’s not dying
He’s listening – what are those old
Familiar sounds down the hallway?
Ah, yes, his son down the hall,
Has gotten back together with his sax
Just got some softer reeds
It’s Ferlinghetti Eve,
March 23, 2020
And Lorenzo is belting it out
From the kitchen
A glass of red on the table
Dad is 101
No, he’s not dying
He’s ducking into the Audiffred Building
At the corner of Mission & The Embarcadero
Heading up to his painting studio
Now a dentist’s office
He’s rowing, rowing
Out the Golden Gate
Or just back to his bed again
He’s taking his son Lorenzo
Age 18, with him to Europe
To meet George Whitman
And visit Shakespeare and Company
He’s forever grateful
To his son Lorenzo
For being patient with him
Finally admitting he needed help at home
And now for helping him stay
At home in his apartment,
Bedroom overlooking the street
Don’t wake the poet laureate
He’s got Nadja in his arms
She’s got him in her legs
In his studio in Hunters Point
Both covered in paint
A panting, action painting
He’s thanking Nancy Peters
Again, again and again
Editor, business partner, owner
A surrealist poet
A literary pillar
The infrastructure
Helped run it all those years
All the other staff
From Shig
To original founder,
Peter D. Martin
He’s not dying
He’s about to paint another sign
For the upstairs windows at City Lights:
"Paper may burn
But words will escape"
Someone is working on a documentary
A history of City Lights
You will see Nancy Peters in there
He’s dealing with a touch of insomnia
Like all of us
Not afraid to admit
That he’s uneasy
That the next nap
Could turn into something
Deeper
He knew at times
The Beats, the Pranksters, the Hippies
The Tourists, the general consumer
May have lifted more books
Than they bought
But to quote Alec Hanley Bemis
Creativity is inherently indifferent to money
And sure Gregory Corso
Famously or infamously
Raided the cash register
After hours at City Lights
But if anyone had a valid license
The poetic license to dip a bit
Into the till
Was there no finer poet
To do so?
He’d like to fly to Dublin in 2020
On Bloomsday
Walk the entire route
From dawn to midnight
And morning of the next day
Professor Brooks Landon at Iowa
Always maintained that it was
The sign of a true Joyce scholar
To make it to Bloomsday
At least once in your lifetime
He knows the future is female
And he is greatly relieved
But asks you
Why men are even running in 2020?
He’s poking around Dave Egger’s
Pirate apothecary store
“The only one on the West Coast”
The only one anywhere
He’s looking in the back
At all the writing tables
Wishing he’d thought of it:
The 826 Valencia model
But glad that others are
Showing the way forward:
Níneve Clements Calegari --
Thinking of the little ones
And the teachers
A rising tide raises all ships
And with global warming
Boats & ships are a perfect form
For the deeper meaning
He’s been meaning to visit the other locations
In the Tenderloin and Mission Bay
There should be plenty of other fish in this sea
He’s heard that
Tom Waits sang his poem “Fortune”
At Lit Quake a few years ago
He’s watched the video
More than once
He heard a story recently
A customer came upstairs to the Poetry room
Saw Mr. Waits sitting in the Poet's chair
Eyes locked in recognition
Yes, the San Francisco Chronicle
Got it right
It is the quietest room in the City
He can’t talk right now
He’s meeting Thomas Wolfe
In the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel
He knows ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’
But you can ‘Look Homeward Angel’
He’s sharpening his ax
Doing the routine maintenance
And making notes
In the owner’s manual
He's having his poem
"The Jack of Hearts"
Turned into a sweet broadside
For Bob Dylan
A poet first
Used music to spread the word
But that didn't fool anyone
Not even the Pulitzer Prize Board
Some people aren't too cool
To care about this man:
Matt Gonzalez is writing
“The Letter and Syllable”
Tamsin Smith is writing
“A Principle of Double Reflection”
Melissa Balin is writing haiku
Comes up with the highway 101 sign
For this year’s Ferlinghetti Day theme
And points out that the position
Of California Poet Laureate
Remains vacant
Wishing we had Peter Dante narrating
In SNL fashion
Like 'The Californians'
"What you’re going to want to do
Is take the 10 over to the 101"
Man, Dante should be cutting up
The 101 like Neal Cassady!
@el_presidante on Instagram
We'll Rise Above With Love
Chip Lyons is kicking off
Ferlinghetti Day each year
Flies in with his family
From Salt Lake City
Starts with the reading of
“The Changing Light at San Francisco”
And then we're off
Just like that
Others posted video tributes
From across the globe
No wrong way to celebrate Ferlinghetti Day:
An annual, giant, open source party
Open Heart, Open Mind
Jesse Kline got tapped to photoshop
Via Ferlinghetti (000) street sign to read
Viva Ferlinghetti - 101
He’s not dying
He’s listening to the fog horns
And when the wind is just right
The barking of the Sea Lions at night
He is saying to himself
Every time he sees it
Remember the Golden Gate was called
The Golden Gate
Long before the Bridge was built
“He’s dreaming about the Poetry Police again
They are about to capture
All libraries, newspapers
Printing presses, and automats
And force their proprietors
At pen’s point to print
Nothing but headlines of pure poetry and
Menus of pure love
Publishing all the love
That is fit to print
His death had come
From falling underfoot
From a huge place
And as he fell between
A zero and the infinite
He tried to stop himself
Just long enough to accomplish
One significant action in his life
As a dying person says
Just wait one moment more
I’m not quite ready
I have one more important thing
I want to do
If you’ll just wait
But after birth
There is only one significant
Action left
And that is the action
Of dying itself”
He’s having an orgasm in paint
But at the very climax
Of the action painting
A strange thing began to happen
Customs men are coming through the train
Rain dropped down from his cap
And the number on his cap
Was the same as his age
And with a burst of disquieting laughter
He started shaking him
Frisking him
Shouting
“Haven’t you anything to declare?”
“Where’ve you hidden your earth’s baggage?”
“Nothing of your own to declare?!”
“Don’t you even have a hat or tie?”
Well yes, he said, come to think of it
I have got something to declare
And mounting the back of a seat
“I do have something of my own to declare”
“I declare that
I know of no other living to be done
Even if eating bananas
Increases sexual potency
There is still a still of love
A reservoir of it
That never changes its level
In the dead sea of things
A constant quantity of love
That remains
Forever on the earth
Even though in dry seasons it evaporates
Drawn up into the air
It still floats there
Ready to descend again
In the first sperm rain
Have you been back to any forest lately?
Have you been back to your own forest
Have you revisited the dark trees?
There is no explanation of the world
There is no rapport of any kind
Between himself and natural objects
Except a rapport of strangeness
Rapport between people and nature
A sympathetic illusion
Eternally perpetuated by man and woman
Made into painters and poets
This mythological hero
Who is always himself
The hero not searching
In spite of all propaganda
To the contrary
The hero not searching
For something like his father
Mother sister brother
The hero is not looking for them
He is looking for himself
As he goes walking on
Only himself riding along
In an empty third class carriage
See now his blown
Newspaper obituary
Tossed upon that wind
Written ahead of time
So all he has to do is give them
His lead for it
Even if a letter is punctuated backward
In one line
All he has to do
Is give them his head
And he’s off to see the wizard
The wonderful wizard of odds”
He’s getting an update
From Elaine Katzenberger
She’s just overseen the fundraiser
The first ever online City Lights Live event
The bookshop has never
Been closed before like this
Go Fund Me goals met
& then some
You think with everything
He’s done
(Painted poesied published)
With everyone he has helped
That he sits back in gentle reflection
And contentment at the prospect
Of entering that good night?
That if you too live to 100
That then you will finally
Feel ready or willing?
His answer to that
Is in the closing lines
To ‘Little Boy’
No, no
Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn’t dying
He wrote that
Allen Ginsberg was dying but look
How wrong he was
About that
Out of the millions
Who have walked or crawled this Earth
Some people, some names
Will never leave it
“May our little
Cultural exchange program
Continue
Into the 21st century
In a world without walls
In which poetry
Is still the best news”
When the time comes
Flowers along the sidewalks
Outside the bookshop
Along Columbus Ave
And the red truck
Maybe in Kerouac Alley
Come pay your respects
No dry eyes
But open hearts, open minds
The historic scene
To be viewed upstairs
From Vesuvio’s
Or from Specs’
Across the street
As I finish writing this
Quietly crying
I set aside
‘Writing Across the Landscape’
His collection of journals
From 1960 to 2010
The last of all his works
That I have yet to read
The close of this poem
Finally comes to me
When I realize it’s not too late
To stop reading now --
Leave him there in Havana
60 years ago --
I already know too much
Leave something for a rainy day
Still to be read in the future
Leaving you there now Mr. Ferlinghetti
In your journals
And so:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Not dying