Ordinary life –
a Gregory Corso connection
- I thought I saw Eric at a rest stop
on the New York State Thruway that same day my son had his
surgery
it might have been him for all I know
I
never saw him lifeless -
believe
in his death
like
my mother believes in the Saints
he wasn’t my best friend
hell
had hardly known him long
just
a guy that roomed with my high school buddy near the South Campus
of a college I didn’t go to –
we used to listen to Dylan bootlegs,
drink the next-up-from-cheapest beer
(probably something Canadian)
all winter long
and
wonder
why
we never got laid
wasn’t that much to my life
not
my wife giving birth
not
my boy in the back seat still loopy from the anesthesia
not
a great teacher who made me a poet or a bum
but when you travel cross-country with a guy,
row
a boat somebody left
near
a lake in Kansas
with a tennis racquet
& a bottle of harsh Whiskey till that puddle in the
center of the continent is all there is
&
the reeds
&
the radio
and the radio is running out of batteries
melting The Who
but
the moon is whiskey-warmed,
no
one is almost out of cigarettes surprisingly
and
what the fuck are you doing in a lake in Kansas
-it killed Eric to play citizen I think
or else that fall from grace
a
drunken night
just
a few years later
Extraordinary life
a Gregory Corso connection
I thought I saw Eric
holding hands with a woman
as they passed the sunglasses stand.
Published by Poetry Super Highway
August 2010
http://poetrysuperhighway.com/ppa/ppa668.html
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