Happy, Happy 100^th Birthday Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti-Max Daddy Of Famed “City Lights Bookstore” In “Beat” San Francisco When It Counted And Muse Of His Generation’s Poets-Redux

By Liam Leahy

When the deal went down the hell with street ruffian and gangster of words and thefts Gregory Corso spinning tall tales to Times Square hipsters willing to sell junkie dreams to Hoboken, New Jersey (where else would Hoboken be) runaways who wind up bed-sheeted in piss-wet rooming house flops, cold water flops; the hell when you think about it too with high Marin County guest house sandal-strewn Golden Gate golden boy Zen Buddha lotus flowers sulks of Portland pines and crater mountain fire ways Gary Snyder; and while we are at it the hell with bright lights in the headlights like some virgin Bambi up high on Sugar Mountain with max daddy Carol, yeah, Neal’s wife tugging her desire away from hopeless homosexual desire phase with college clean including sparkling white shirt and penny loafers Mike McClure; while I am on a roll  double the hell with clear the coffeehouses out (so some get rich junkie owners can fill the floor with those Hoboken, no need to say New Jersey, right, runaways caught out on Friday night banishments playing fucking folk music when the be-bop bad boy poets were asunder and jazz bars cried out to the new dispensation with his primal wailing to Keil, devil servant down in ancient Zoroastrian times along with simply homages to the whore of Babylon (small “w” before she got into the history book), Phil Larkin; ditto double the hell with trying to hit that high white note, that silky note even the Duke had trouble blasting and Charlie almost lost his junkie soul to that only jazz boys and girls can aspire to Billie’s hustling Dan man, the fixer, MaJohn Dupree; back to single hells (watch for the semi-colons)for Dante boys wishing they knew what the seven circles were all about before they were deflowered all choir practice glow bum-tucked like Kenneth Rexforth (and don’t forget Rexforth’s daughter who everybody took a run at and why not even gay boys like Ginsberg, maybe especially gay boys trying to figure out why they were different when different was except in havens like Frisco town not cool, subjected devotees to racks and faggots); and, I don’t care if I used this lead-in before to hell as well the flaming drag queen hiding out in Nantasket drag queen boats (who knew) artless (then) except strong knuckles and a quick jab Tim Riley before he fanned the flames of Miss Judy Garland’s hem in North Beach cellars and made bluegrass green in ocean spray to the China seas bays filled with oil tankers and sodomites sing his naughty boy praises. Close out, and note separation and no fucking semi-colon so something new in the world, in the end, the bookend when the town, no, let’s go back to New Jack town, three Howard Johnson hot dog fucks, with relish and mustard if you must know, like Miss Julie Johnson one of the few female beat hipsters although not one of the quick lays in some Joe and Nemo alley.

More retrospective, more circumspect after down-loading trash on lesser sinners comes the big boys time starting with a rumbling fullback out of some Merrimack estuary looking hot dog hungry (already knowing that Miss Julie awaits him in some Ho Jo hot spot a few years down the lane he was that good looking and hip too even if never getting that mill town dust off his boots. Looking cigarette in hand, hobo’s bindle sliding off his back like some holy goof displaced out of European DP camps and he only Icelandic run bound dropping to the titanic seas (after serious German encounters doing some Murmansk run).  Name him brother name him now or forever how your peace. So Jack, Jack, say it Kerouac, the fuck with that Jack stuff Ti Jean of ten million Allan Ginsberg homosexual dreams and Neal Cassidy, Adonis of the West found in some Larimer Street gin mill, lost father’s gets some play out in that fucking Jersey shore, okay  

Very much more circumspect now that we have entered the poetic pantheon leaving the Garys, Phils and Michaels behind to waterfront sailor joints headingout to China seas with small be-bop patter to seet hem on their ways, by speaking names beyond Kaddish ceremonials. There is no way around it this time Moloch destroyer of modern times stripping poor Tom Eliot (St. Lou’s Tommy boy okay) of everything but his shoddy bedding and his lost in the hills and trenches of Eastern France cursive language as wave after wave fell to complete one square yard Carl Solomon’s dear friend and his mother howler in the dust for all the good it did him, or her, Allan Ginsberg. Yeah, the beat down, beat around, beat sound, beatitude beat to hear holy goof Jack tell it in his Tanqueray, no, Tokay, even cheaper when times were tighter and the panhandling fell flat  funks, crowd that took up plenty of air come 1950s in the states come desolation row time. Spoke truth about the great nos, homosexuality, communism the Moloch, rationality in deep freeze Cold War America without blushing all in one massive half hour singsong (I have said plainsong elsewhere but let me amend that)

Hell all those guys were so light they couldn’t hold feathers without flying into spinoff Bay streams on some outbound freighter. Would have sold their zillion fucking books (if some editor could rein them in) and spoke their damn half hour half understood poems (although everybody in the room even underage high school students on the slum knew this was not their high school Tom and Robert noise). Then there was the glue, a sideman to the pretty boys although he could do Coney Island of the mind, or was it mine, Ferlinghetti, Lawrence some stray cat who had glue aplenty, the guy who kept the torch bright, the guy who had enough knowledge of business which almost to a man (or woman for that matter), beats heating squares up like toast, scorned except come poetry reading time some foggy and rainy nights, book signing when Random House said piss off, putting money in the bucket for the Thunderbird struck nights(Tokay as always a backup in case the day’s take was short), back room shacking up to keep from the coldest days in August world. Yeah, Happy Birthday Baby, Buddha in cowboy boots and tepid wrangler jeans Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the magic 100 years. Connection, you always had the connection brother.