Allen Ginsberg
–~~ AG ~~–
dream
spent the morning
visiting
many parts of London kept noticing
Allen Ginsberg
on a bus
in a shop
crossing the road
slightly hunched busy
carrying papers in a wallet
maybe shopping
ordinary tired clothes
as I keep on seeing him
maybe I could give him my poems
to look at maybe I should
all of them all five hundred
no just some of them
late afternoon I am walking
down Eglinton Hill melting ice-cream light
some satisfaction with the day and
cream soda
slowly with my Nan – getting old chatting
feels like walking with Charlotte
ahead are cars
one indicating right to pull out
another waiting just behind
indicating left he’ll take his place
both waiting for another coming uphill
right of way complicated
how this all happens
another car slows downhill
before the uphill one has still to pass
he wants to park too but
he’d narrow the road cars parked
right and left
he rolls further down and parks on the right
much more space
opposite number 46
I wonder if Allen
is in the car
the car is medium blue
a good ten years old
tired but working
filled with stuff only room for the driver I think
yes it’s Allen getting out of the car
does he live here
Nan asks if Assiki is in Malta
I don’t know but say I think so
Allen hears and nods yes
as we pass – that is where Joe
or Jon have got to now travelling
go on give him your poems
don’t walk past and pretend you’re OK
give them
but I am reticent
because I don’t like to ask
fracture into the breakfast room or the upper kitchen
cluttered full of stuff
space for only one at the table
Allen has made some tea
and sits down to turn the pages
of my script
–~~ AG ~~–
Allen Ginsberg smiled
through the cubist cuts and planes
of the fifties’ sixties
and the sixties’ seventies
lives glancing straight at me
at times shoulder to
shoulder with them all
hunched balding bearded
nodding repeating and dying
so inevitably and know-ably
oooh
–~~ AG ~~–
1954
in Mexico
Allen Ginsberg didn’t
work on the plantation
much but lay
on his side
in the hammock writing
in his journal
and reading
out of the journals
would come a voice
that would shake the trees
like the monkeys
in the jungle
–~~ AG ~~–
the cure
for block
when you are inhibited in flow
ears flat crouching
read some Allen Ginsberg
the great loosener
contains open care
able open naïveté
inexorable naïveté
that catches a groove
that catches a naïve
that catches an open
through the wiles connives and flattery
of the powerpolitico accomitvoid
evasiagendal scruplelogicless
humanomanagerialasphyxia
virus which causes so much
snot
–~~ AG ~~–
what …
… did Allen really describe
the contents of his room
and make it mythic with
the happening of his love?
was that all?
yes
–~~ AG ~~–
1958
“everybody high nobody
had nothing to say
the high trees
the sky”
from Allen Ginsberg’s journals, Paris
–~~ AG ~~–
from Allen Ginsberg’s Journal, August 13th, 1944
“she smiled at me [and]
my watch forgot to tick”
–~~ AG ~~–
guileless naïveté –
a biographical
manifest –oh!
do not preclude writing
dressed in poetic ideas
open to new-dity
looking at everything
all over again
fifty years on
–~~ AG ~~–
so sad
reading Allen Ginsberg’s laments throughout his sixties
as if his American speech as mantra
had not been sufficient
still
the collapse of old age and illness
strips away everything
but the still-
vulnerable child
come along for the
ride
–~~ AG ~~–
