who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley
 “Howl” ~ Allen Ginsberg

In 1968, before the moon landing 
& after the Summer of Love, 
as a favor I dropped off homemade meth 
to a guy whose girlfriend’s black hair was streaked with silver.
As soon as he injected a match head’s worth
he collapsed
& I was sure he was dead
but when he came to minutes later
he thanked me-
It was the best-
& he wanted more
as if there were any more.

When I thought I’d killed him I was in a sweat.
The girl in the half-plastered brick room
decorated with album covers—
The Fish, The Mothers, The Dead—
was crying.
I had no wisdom whatsoever.
All I wanted was a journey.

    ~
     Billy the Greek told me I had a weak mind
     & it was true.
     Too weak to sleep only once
     with Jeanette, the Barbados      woman.
    It wasn’t long before she hit me with a chair,
    startled cats diving for cover
    in that ground floor apartment by the park.
    A patrol car every night in front.
    Her skin browner than oak leaves after frost.
    ~

I still dream of Nixon resigning & my father,
who kept his autographed picture on an end table,
driving through Brooklyn
picking up shirts and blouses
from the Ebbets Field project
& from the judges on Prospect Park West.
He’d take them to Mel’s Dry Cleaners on Greene Street,
pick them up 2 days later,
price & mark them in his store,
then deliver them to the judges & projects.
When I dealt I did the same.
Bought an ounce of hash from Vinnie for $90
sold it to friends for $100.
I’m so like my father,
a middleman running errands
    ~
    He came to my apartment when Jeanette was living there.
    Seeing her, he dropped the bundled laundry & fled.
    ~

On the way back from Paradise Alley
Ian ran a light on Myrtle Avenue.
A beat cop waved us down but Ian floored the Chevy
& the cop commandeered a gypsy cab,
giving chase through the breathless ghetto. We won.
Ian, found dead a week later in his backseat, drove back,
searching for the tossed out drugs.
    ~
    Dock Ellis says he pitched a no-hitter on acid,
    In my case, I read The Times stock quotes to my father.
    It made him happy, he said, for us to be closer.
    After the killings at Kent State
    all of America went on pass/fail
    & so I graduated college.
    ~

Those who despised the government & its war,
those who hated all authority,
provocateurs, opportunists, pacifists,
those hoping to get laid,
thousands coughed in a fog of pepper spray
in the middle of Connecticut Avenue.
Wex threw a brick at an unmarked car.
Two cops stepped out,
hands on pistols.
From the rooftop came more bricks.
The cops quickly back in their car,
plowing their way around the block.
    ~
    After Janis sang
    & the Southern Comfort tossed,
    thoroughbreds reared in the paddock
    & throngs of youth camped out
    in grassy fields by the racetrack parking lot.
    At dawn I heard a motor start,
    someone asleep in a mummy bag in the van’s path,
    then a scream which has never faded.
    ~

I introduced Jeanette to my friends.
She slept with a few & later,
in an armed robbery,
paid a surprise visit on Paul,
clerking the late shift at the 8th Street Bookstore.
    ~
    After fleeing New York
    I lived on a cliff,
    sun & fire those months of hiding.
    No one to visit & the cops didn’t know me.
    It was so quiet in California
    walking on red tide beaches
    I could hear stray shells & buried mines
    popping in the East.
    ~

On the night Jeanette & I made up
an astronaut stepped out on the moon.
Looking up, he saw the Earth,
half in shadow,
half light.