Oct 29—N.Y. Maine
—SUNSET
I am flying into a trail of Black Smoke
Kerouac’s obituary conserves Time’s
Front Paragraphs—
Empire State in Heaven Sun Set red
White Mist
over the billion trees of the Bronx—
There’s too much to see
Jack saw Sun Set Red over the Hudson Horizon
Two three decades back
thirtynine fortynine fiftynine
sixtynine
John Holmes pursed his lips, cynic
& empty-eyed robot,
and wept tears.
Smoke plumed up from oceanside chimneys
plane roars north over Long Island
Montauk stretched in red sunset—
Northport, in the trees, jack drank
rot gut & maide haikus of birds
tweetling on his porch rail at dawn—
Fell down & saw death’s golden lite
in Florida garden a decade ago.
Now taken utterly, soul upward,
& body down in wood coffin
& concrete slab-box
I threw a kissed handful of damp earth
down on the stone lid
& sighed
Looking in Creeley’s one eye,
Peter sweet holding a flower
Gregory toothless bending his
knuckle to Cinema Machine—
and that’s the end of the drabble tongued
poet who sounded his Kock-rup
throughout the Northwest Passage.
Blue dusk over Saybrook, Holmes
sits down to dine Victorian—
& Time has a Ten Page Spread on
Homosexual-Fairies!
Well, while I’m here I’ll
do the work—
and what’s the work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow.
