When I was 16 or 17, like in 1958 or 1959, my friend Harvey Goldner, my first mentor in the community of poets, guided me to a basement listening room in the Memphis Public Library. There we listened to the San Francisco Renaissance poets—Rexroth, Ginsberg, Snyder, Whalen, Lew Welch, Spicer, Ferlinghetti, and all the rest. We spent the whole afternoon there, the 78rpm records spinning round and round. The poem that opened my heart the widest was Ferlinghetti’s “Dog.” (Please listen before reading my poems.) That poem, with its street-talking wisdom, was revelatory for me, a young man wanting to be a poet. I keep it in my heart and mind all these years. Likewise, his City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Publishing were also inspiration for me when Lee and I began Cinco Puntos Press in 1985 and then in 2001 when we bought our own storefront in downtown El Paso. Around the time of his 100th birthday, thanks to our friend Elaine Katzenberger (publisher, City Lights Publishing), I met and talked with him at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s. He was like an old friend. Indeed, he was an old friend. I started going back to his work and was once again listening to his long-ago reading of “Dog.” That was the inspiration of the first poem below. Then, with his death earlier this year, I scribbled down a short poem in my journal about a dog disappearing into the arroyo on the day of his death. This evolved into the second poem. Both poems, I think, echo Ferlinghetti’s poetics of his longer poems. That makes me happy. Since his death, I’ve talked with many of my contemporaries—old folks like myself, readers and poets—for whom his poetry, City Lights Bookstore, and City Lights Publishing were great sources of inspiration for their lives. This blog is my tribute to him. May we all walk in beauty and peace.
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| Back in the Day |
Ferlinghetti’s Goddamned Dog
Goddamned Ferlinghetti’s dog
keeps following me everywhere I go
homeless mongrel of a dog
trots freely in the streets
doing whatever dogs do
yapping peeing eating garbage
sniffing around
and the things he sees
the things he smells
big things small things
it’s all the same world to Ferlinghetti’s dog
no heaven and no hell
no me and you
just the magical world of stuff
living breathing reality
and when the dog goes doo-doo
in the park
the thick green grass
his hind legs dancing that dog scratch boogie
I go get a baggy to clean it up,
being a good citizen
don’t you know?
because this is America
the home of the free
likewise
Turtle Island America
Stonewall America
Crazy Horse America
Billy Holiday America
Darthula Baldwin America
Walt Whitman America
Malcolm X America
Joe Hill America
Felipe Angeles America
Recovering Alcoholics and Recovering Addicts America
Boddhisatvas America
Mahasattvas America
the Great Prajna Paramita
America
America America
our lotus of many-colored petals
floating in the muddy waters
the midst of human chaos
the Dark Heart of Sky
America America America―
Yes, yes, we are offering ourselves
to the dirt and the mud
the sky the water the sun the moon
to the bees and butterflies,
the ants the snails the hummingbirds and moths…
Whoa! Whoa!
How did this happen?
No wonder Snooks Eaglin shows up.
He's sitting on that park bench
black man strumming his blues guitar
strumming some funky ontology
strumming that dog’s reality, says
Oh it’s a great sound track
for those two young women
making love in the shade of a big oak tree
all those happy grunts and groans some giggles
fingers flying hither and yon
and an old white woman
pushing her walker down the path
shouts out
"Hallelujah Hallelujah
Bless me Jesus Bless me Jesus"
which Snooks understands of course
he smiles his best Kasapa smile
gives that old church lady a big "Amen, Sister!"
and I take the opportunity of silence
to dump the baggy into the garbage
because nobody wants to step
into a pile of shit
even if
it did just drop warm and fresh
from the backend
of Ferlinghetti’s goddamned dog.
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Memorial Reading
Jack Kerouac Alley |
Monday, 22 February 2021
—In memory of Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Dear Lawrence,
Almost 102 years old!
That was pretty good, Viejo.
No wonder I saw that dog of yours again
surrounded by twilight city
as he disappeared down into the arroyo
he went scurrying along
among the quail and roadrunners,
all the insects, coyotes,
feral cats, reptiles and other critters.
The cactus wrens squawked and squawked
in celebration of the dog’s arrival—
"It is a good day to die!"
The ghostly ancestors were there too!
Women and men, known and unknown,
those whom you’ve honored with your life,
our lineage of poets,
the celebrants of many-tongued language,
the wild river that flows through us,
the consciousness of who we are—
a procession that goes on and on,
ancestors dreaming of new births,
you among them now,
that wild and many-headed luminous beast of poetry
walking the walk toward the end of human time,
fists raised as one,
strolling unhurried down the arroyo,
a pow-wow drum beating at the darkening sky
BOOM-BOOM / BOOM-BOOM / BOOM-BOOM
For those of us who remain
Thank you very much, Lawrence.
Thank you, thank you.
Bobby
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