Thursday, February 12, 2009

Cleaving Rexroth



A Letter to Kenneth Rexroth

dear kenneth,

when i write to you — it’s not

past you — your words and flesh

there in — santa barbara

or still here — in san francisco

here in coit tower — looking out over

the city you loved — that failed you

the scene of how — many renaissances

berkeley, SF — beatniks, hippies

living awhile — pacific heights…

down the hill — from lafayette park

in an apartment — on sacramento

walking down to — japantown

back home — along fillmore

i was there too but — not like you


i was more the fool — than you back then

worse than the beats — you came to hate

i was a hippie — in the late ‘60’s


then later mid-nineties — a writer

revisiting my own — tacky renaissance

the so-called — strident sappho one

the castro — the man with night sweats

taking a taxi — to north beach

where jack spicer — drank himself to death

the stillness upstairs — city light books

my 2 books — between ginsberg & proust


looking back — who would’ve guessed

the death of hippies — all my gay friends too

caught up in the — same sad zeitgeist blues

most of them dead — like everybody else

hardly whitmanesque — more like auswitsch

funny how — most literary movements

end up in the gutter — sacramental

adhesiveness — down the drain



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