50 Years Gone The Father We Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack Nights-Searching  For The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night

By Seth Garth, known as Charles River Blackie for no other reason than he slept along those banks, the Cambridge side and some raggedy ass wino who tried to cut him under the Anderson Bridge one night called him that and it stuck. Those wino-sapped bums, piss leaky tramps and poet-king hoboes all gone to some graven spot long ago from drink, drug, or their own hubris which they never understood gone and the moniker too.  

These old time lonesome hobo flash scenes from the time before hoboing became my way of life, my Charles River Blackie’s on the bum moniker please to meet you way of life, told around hobo, bum, tramp camp fires and every hobo, bum, tramp knew the distinctions and they were fought over, broken bottle in hand like knights of old defending sullen moat-filled sinkholes of turf, along railroad sidings, along ravines, or under bridges when lies were being swapped to keep the chill off (and scratch pad note written down) well after I left the road (although not the life, I just stopped my nomadic roaming and bumming and settler-ed in as stationary flop house denizen), were originally conceived (born in some drift-less night, virginally born, hah, Catholic-showered Ti Jean would know my reference and let it go at that,  nights really, memory high, blasted on sixteen old time highs, benny, miff, sister, brother, boy, girl, jesus, sweet jesus, weed, and mary jane bless her heated heart was the least of it), as separate entries, as separate dream thoughts, and they can be read as such. They can also be read, collectively in sequence, as part of a greater experience and thus I have gathered them together here in one place.

The genesis of these bump in the night scenes, or sketches if you insist, initially came together, as will be noted further below, as a result of a question, no, not a question really but a sense of bewilderment, a “what the hell are you trying to tell us, why, and what for,” that a young friend of mine, a cosmic traveler in his own right from what I have gleaned from the times that I have had occasion to speak to him, speak in his dream words neo-hobo want-to-be vocabulary and thus comprehend a little, had about my use of the term “in search of the blue-pink great American West night” in many of the sketches that I was camp fire swapping some time back. That point-blank query lead to some necessary introspection on my part about the great 1960s hitchhike highway, physical, mental and spiritual of my youth and I belted out a scratch pad short reply. But that was hardly the end of it. The reply triggered further remembrances and, as such things do, triggered some more after that and led to this stream of be-bop road scenes.

Of course that young friend’s spark only tells part of the story. No question that I had already been thinking a lot, sitting up in my room, my spartan bed, bureau, small table, single chair room where I have of late been stationary roaming and bumming, about those 1960s days, and the influence of re-re-reading Jack Kerouac’s “beat” travelogues, especially On The Road during that period is, or should be, obvious as well. I made many trips across the country in those days, mostly through use of the hitchhike thumb, for lack of cash if no other reason, but the choice of the mainly 1969 sweet youth, sweet youth love, sweet Angelica-laced company trip scenes here are calculated to give the best sense of those trips, and the closest I every came to finding out some truth on that damn blue –pink quest. And if all those reasons individually, or collectively, do not tell the story behind the scenes then let’s just leave it as this-the restlessness that drove that youthful quest is still in my bones, still driving my old bones enough to keep me restless forty years later. Hey there is still some of that lonesome hobo wandering left, left unresolved, left thumb-less in the gentle rain good night. Enough said.

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There is no question that over the past year or so I have been deep in remembrances of the influences, great and small, of the 1950s“beats” on my own sorry teen-aged alienation and teen-aged angst (sometimes they were separate anguishes, sometimes tied together like inseparable twins, mostly the later) and the struggle to find my place in the sun, to write in bright lights my own beat plainsong. Of course, that "beat" influence was blown over me second-hand as I was just a little too young, or a little too wide-world unconscious, to be there at the creation, on those first roads west, those first fitfully car-driven, gas-fuelled, thumb hanging-out, sore-footed, free exploration west roads, in body and mind that exploded in the immediate post-World War II walking daddy walk world. And of that first great rush of the adrenal in trying to discover, eternally discover as it has turned out, the search for the meaning of the great blue-pink American West night. Ah, pioneer-boys, thanks.

I just got a whiff, a passing whiff of that electric-charged air, the sweet “be-bop”, bop-bop, real gone daddy, cooled-out, pipe-filled with whatever (hash, the O , sweet jesus weed, blessed mary jane, blessed Immaculate Conception Mary and whore around town Mary Mags who got to heaven on the layaway plan and Ti Jean would know exactly what that meant), jazz-sexed (Charley, Dizzy, Miles, and Lester when in his groove blowing that big fat sexy sad-eyed sax at the end behind the our lady of the flowers and other the Prez need know  what that meant when she was in her final sorrows), high white note-blown (blown out the first heard time on some warm, drink sweaty, weather sweaty, sweet jimson in the incense-filled North Beach Frisco sweaty air night, blown out in honor of, come on now, in lure of, that blonde twist (always Saturday afternoon matinee addicted to film noir and the lingo so twist or frill come naturally if not correctly in these deadened times) sitting alone in the alabaster white skin, ruby red lips (I swear out of the high tide of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his brother, his lover and the whole kettle of fish Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who blew opium dreams and wet red lips), black beret atop looking like Jean Genet’s lost mother, black eye-liner eyes, black bump out sweater, black form-fitting skirt, black stockings, black shoes, and wonder, I then Be-Bop Benny monikered in the 1967 summer of love night wonder (long before the down trail knife cut Anderson Bridge Charles River Blackie human sink), woman mystery wonder I would bet six-two and even black undergarments too, howling in the wind plainsong afterglow.

Moreover, Jesus that moreover that has saved more ships wreaked than old Jesus playing Jesus saved sinners and Mary Mag whores, that whiff was somewhat tarnished, a little sullen and withdrawn, and media-used up by my time. (Christ, every television show, every mainstream media outlet it seemed had it mock-“beat” as counter-point to the sober real world, Ike’s sober real world of bombs and psychic beatings remember Carl Solomon and his sorrows before the knife and before a howling poet caused him pain.) More than one faux black chino-wearing, black beret’d, stringy-bearded; nightshade sun-glassed, pseudo-poetic-pounding, television-derived fakir crossed my path in Harvard Square in those high stakes early 1960s high school days. A few real ones as well. (A couple, whom I still pass occasionally, pan-handling occasionally, giving a quick nod to, have never given up the ghost and still haunt the old square looking for the long-gone, storied 1962 Hayes-Bickford, a place where the serious and the fakirs gathered in the late night before dawn hour to pour out their souls, via mouth or on paper fortified with Ti Jean’s Tokay cheapjack wine. Good luck in your search, men for blessed are the earth seekers and alms-seekers too.). More to the point, I came too late to be able to settle comfortably into that anti-political world that the “beats” thrived in. Great political and social events were unfolding, and I wanted in, feverishly wanted in, with both hands (and, maybe, feet too).

You know some of the beat leaders, the real ones, don’t you? Remembered, seemingly profusely remembered now, by every passing acquaintance with some rough-hewn writing specimen or faded photograph to present. Hell people who after giving the best summer of their lives to the Village (or North Beach) and to beat life and then after that minute graduating to stockbroker Wall Street are glutting the market with their minute pictures with the father we almost knew Jack, deeply homosexual Allen whom they would not bring home to mother, or mad monk gangster poet Corso, steamy affairs (all sexes), and take on that lost minute. (Just check E-bay or Amazon if you think I am kidding although I have yet to see some Elvis-divined Velco styled hanging of Allan bopping Neal Cassidy in front of some downtown Denver department store window.) Worse. Now merely photo-plastered, book wrote, college english department deconstruction’d , academic journal-debated. Ah, but then in full glory plaid shirt, white shirt, tee shirt, dungarees, chinos, sturdy foot-sore cosmic traveler shoes, visuals of heaven’s own angel bums, if there was a heaven and there were angels and if that locale needed bums.

Jack, million hungry word man-child sanctified, Lowell mills-etched and trapped and mother-fed, Jack Kerouac. Allen, om-om-om, bop, bop, mantra-man, mad Paterson-trapped, New Jersey, natch, modern plainsong-poet-in-chief, Allen Ginsberg. William, sweet opium dream (or, maybe, not so sweet when the supply ran out and the sickness came on looking fast and hard for that fixer man who would get him well, old tired in the eyes Nelson Algren’s Frankie Machine could have told him there was not enough sorrow opium in the world to staunch that dream-sore), needle-driven, sardonic, ironic, chronic, Tangiers-trapped, Harvard man (finally, a useful one, after all those winos and junkies still bopping for that insane Hayes-Bickford, oops, sorry), Williams S. Burroughs. Neal, wild word, wild gesture, long-donked to fever Allan dreams Adonis golden boy-dropped out of ashcan all-America dream man, tire-kicking, oil-checking, gas-filling, zen master wheelman gluing the enterprise together, Neal Cassady. And a whirling crowd of others, including mad, street-wise, saint-gunsel, Gregory Corso. I am a little fuzzy these days on the genesis of my relationship to this crowd (although a reading of Ginsberg’s Howl was probably first in those frantic, high school, Harvard Square-hopping, poetry-pounding, guitar-strummed, existential word space, coffee, no sugar, I’ll have a refill, please, fugitive dream’d, coffeehouse-anchored days). This I know. I qualified, in triplicate, teen angst, teen alienation, teen luddite as a card-carrying member in those days.

More recently that old time angst, that old time alienation and a smidgen of that old-time luddite has cast its spell on me. I have been held hostage to, been hypnotized by, been ocean-sized swept away by, been word ping-pong bounced off of and collided into by, head over heels language-loved by, word-curled around and caressed by the ancient black night into the drowsy dawn 1950s child view vision Kerouac/Ginsberg/Burroughs/Corso-led “beats” homage to the great American West night. (Beat: life beat-up, fellaheen and fellaheena beat-down, beat around, be-bop jazz beat, beatified church beat, howl poem beat, beat okay, anyway you can get a handle on it, beat.). The great American West “beat” breakout from the day weary, boxed-in, shoulder-to-the-wheel, eyes forward, hands to the keyboard, work-a-day-world, dream-fleshed-out night. Of leaving behind on the slow-fast, two-lane, no passing, broken-lined old Route 6, or 66, or 666, or whatever route, whatever dream route, whatever dream hitchhike gas station/diner highway beyond the Eastern shores night, of the get away from the machine, the machine-making machines, the “little boxes” machine night, and also of the reckless breakout of mannered, cramped, parlor-fit language night. Whoa!

This Kerouacian wordplay on-the-road’d, dharma-bummed, big sur’d, desolation angel’d night, this Ginsberg-ite trumpet howl, cry-out to the high heavens against the death machine night, this Burroughs-ish languid, sweet opium-dreamed, laid-back night, this Neal Cassady-driven, foot-clutched, brake-pedaled, wagon-master of the to and fro of the post-World War II American West night, was not my night but close enough so that I could touch it, and have it touch me even half a century later. So blame Jack and the gang, okay and I will give you his current Lowell, Massachusetts home address upon request so that you can direct your inquiries there.

Blame Jack, as well, for the busting out beyond the factory lakes, corn-fed plains, get the hell out of Kansas flats, on up into the rockiesmountainhigh (or is it just high) and then straight, no time for dinosaur lament Ogden or tumbleweed Winnemucca, to the coast, come hell or high water. Yah, busting out and free. Kid dream great American West night, car-driven (hell, old pick-up truck-driven, English racer bicycle-driven, hitchhike thumbed, flat-bed train-ridden, sore-footed, shoe-beaten walked, if need be), two dollar tank-filled, oil-checked, tires-kicked, money pocket’d, surf’s up, surf’s crashing up against the high shoulder ancient seawalls, cruising down the coast highway, Pacific Coast Highway One, the endlessly twisting jalopy-driven pin-turned coast highway, down by the shore, sand swirling, bingo, bango, bongo with your baby everything’s alright, go some place after the bango, some great American West drive-in place. Can you blame them or me?

So as for that hobo angel comrade, that well-respected young cosmic traveler, what would he know, really, of the great blue-pink American West night that I, and not I alone, were searching for back in those halcyon days of my youth in the early 1960s. What would he know, for example, except in story book or oral tradition from parents or, oh no, maybe, grandparents, of the old time parched, dusty, shoe-leather-beating, foot-sore, sore-shouldered, backpacked, bed-rolled, going-my-way?, watch out for the cops over there (especially in Connecticut and Arizona), hitchhike white-lined road. The thirsty, blistered, backpacked, bed-rolled, thumb-stuck-out, eternally thumb-stuck-out, waiting for some great savior kindred-laden Volkswagen home/collective/ magical mystery tour bus or the commandeered rainbow-marked, life-marked, soul-marked yellow school bus, yellow brick road school bus. Hell, even of old farmer-going-to-market, fruit and vegetable-laden Ford truck, benny-popping, eyes-wide, metal-to-the-petal, transcontinental teamster-driving goods to some westward market or kid Saturday love nest, buddy-racing cool jalopy road. Yah, what would he know of that.

Of the road out, out anywhere, anywhere west, from the stuffy confines of worn-out, hard-scrabble, uptight, ocean-at-you-back, close-quartered, neighbor on top of neighbor, keep your private business private, used-up New England granite-grey death-chanting night. Of the struggle, really, for color, to change the contour of the natural palette to other colors brighter than the New England leafy greens and browns of the trees and the blues, or better blue-greens, or even better yet of white-flecked, white- foamed, blue-greens of the Eastern oceans. (Yah, I know, I know, before you even start on me about it, all about the million tree flaming yellow-red-orange autumn leaf minute and the thousand icicle-dropped, road strewn dead tree branch, white winter snow drift eternity, on land or ocean but those don’t count, at least here, and not now)

Or of the infinite oil-stained, gas-fumed, rag-wiped, overall’d, gas-jockey, Esso, Texaco, Mobil, Shell stations named, the rest lost too lost in time to name, two dollar fill-up-check-the-oil, please, the-water-as-well, inflate the tires, hit the murky, fetid, lava soap-smelled bathrooms, maybe grab a Coke, hey, no Hires Root Beer on this road. This Route 66, or Route 50 or Route you-name-the route, route west, exit east dream route, rolling red barn-dotted (needing paints to this jaded eye), rocky field-plowed (crooked plowed to boot), occasionally cow-mooed, same for horses, sheep, some scrawny chickens, and children as well, scrawny too. The leavings of the westward trek, when the westward trek meant eternal fields, golden fields, and to hell with damned rocks, and silts, and worn-out soils absent-mindedly left behind for those who would have to, have to I tell you, stay put in the cabin'd hollows and lazily watered-creeks. On the endlessly sulky blues-greens, the sullen smoky grey-black of mist-foamed rolling hills that echo the slight sound of the mountain wind tunnel, of the creakily-fiddled wind-song Appalachian night. 

[A dream song of pre-natal longing for the sound of that wild ravine, hills and hollows included , music embedded riding mother womb in some father’s borrowed beat-up Packard as he, the father, showed his bride, his yankee bride if you can believe it in those southern-drenched hills,  his place in the sun, his faded no account place, kicking the dirt, the muck, the coal dust, the slag, the cabin fever, unrequited, from his shoeless feet, and at the first sign of deliverance (those war clouds that haunted his generation) bought himself a one-way, one-way did you hear, for the wide world, no looking back. And so from that one-way ticket his son, like ten thousand ten thousand other restless mid-century (20th, okay) sons, forced himself to wander aimlessly searching for some mythic unpainted red barn (desperately in need of paints, black trim might be nice in contrast) hidden in some unnamed wind-swept valley, complete with Saturday night fiddlers, mandolin players, guitar-pickers, maybe a bass, fortified with Billy Jack’s white lightning, to quell that mountain wind-song longing.]        

Or of diner stops, little narrow-aisled, pop-up-stool’d, formica counter-topped, red (mostly) imitation leather booth seats, smoked-filled cabooses of diners. Of now anchored, abandoned train porter-serviced, off-silver, off-green, off-red, off any faded color “greasy spoon” diners. Of daily house special meat loaf, gravy-slurp, steam-soggy carrots, and buttered mashed potato-fill up, Saturday night pot roast special, turkey club sandwich potato chips on the side, breakfast all day, coffee-fill-up, free refill, please, diners. Granddaddies to today’s more spacious back road highway locales, styled family-friendly but that still reek of meat loaf-steamed carrots- creamed mashed tater-fill. Spots then that spoke of rarely employed, hungry men, of shifty-eyed, expense account-weary traveling men, of high-benny, eyes-wide, mortgaged to the hilt, wife ran off with boyfriend, kids hardly know him, teamsters hauling American product to and fro and of other men not at ease in more eloquent, table-mannered, women-touched places. Those landscape old state and county side of the highway diners, complete with authentic surly, know-it-all-been-through-it-all, pencil-eared, steam-sweated uniform, maybe, cigarette-hanging from tired ruby red lips, heavily made-up waitress along the endless slag-heap, rusting railroad bed, sulphur-aired, grey-black smoke-belching , fiery furnace-blasting, headache metal-pounding, steel-eyed, coal dust-breathe, hog-butcher to the world, sinewy-muscled green-grey, moonless, Great Lakes night.

[Some great Sandburg hog butcher to the world, great grain elevator to the paying world, great machine monster devouring the earth, building, building steel, building tractors, building buildings, building automobiles in the fugitive night. “Howdy do, what’s yours, brother,” no from hunger brother, get lost, but step right up, that lost age America, lost about the time the Northwest Territories closed up and divided themselves up. And of that waitress in Muncie, or was she from Muncie, and found in Steubenville down on some American river, on some Ohio River fugitive night (yah, fugitive, fugitive everything then in that great jail-break),  and she, the waitress she, no threadbare, seen it all, heard it all waitress, but just a wanderlust angel young woman (not all wanderlust leads to New Jack City, ‘Frisco town, Hollywood dreams, come on) feeling her legs on that first shot away from home trip  decided, decided do you hear me , that she needed to try a “hippie” gentleman, and she did, and he was, for as long as they could travel that hitchhike blue-pink American West night-seeking highway before the whole thing ebbed but that was another story.]   

Or of two-bit road intersection stops, some rutted, pot-holed country road intersecting some mud-spattered, creviced backwater farm road, practically dirt roads barely removed from old time prairie pioneer day times, west-crazy pioneer times, ghost-crazy-pioneer days. Of fields, vast, slightly rolling, actually very slightly rolling, endless yellow, yellow–glazed, yellow-tinged, yellow until you get sick of the sight of yellow, sick of the word yellow even, acres under cultivation to feed hungry cities, as if corn, or soy, or wheat, or manna itself could fill that empty-bellied feeling that is ablaze in the land. But we will deal with one hunger at a time. And dotted every so often with silos and barns and grain elevators for all to know the crops are in and ready to serve that physical hunger. Of half-sleep, half hungry-eye, city boy hungry eyes, unused to the dark, dangerous, sullen, unknown shadows, bed roll-unrolled, knapsack-pillowed, sleep by the side of the wheat, soy, corn road ravine, and every once in a blue moon midnight car passings, snaggly blanket-covered, knap-sack head rested, cold-frozed, out in the great day corn yellow field beneath the blue black, beyond city sky black, starless Iowa night.

[Of that sweet Neola night, sleeping along some cow-mooed ravine, half dazed from too many days on back roads and too few miles west , and then they waking to some sullen hot, hot as blazes Neola sun, trucks, mainly pick-ups passing by that forlorn road loaded with farm stuff (jesus, don’t ask what, hoes, maybe, maybe rakes). Suddenly a pick-up stops and an ancient (ancient by silly young eyes) angel woman, later identified as Aunt Betty, no Saint Betty, stopped, back-up and asked, asked in that sweet lost Iowa nasal, whether they, the pair of them, him and her, needed anything, needed a corn-fed meal. Later at Aunt Betty’s Diner, fed, fed to high heaven, she sensing a kindred in the she, gave her view, her view that the grand-daughters, hell, great grand-daughters of those first trek pioneers were good for citified eastern boys, in short doses. And she saint aunt angel Betty had it down, down just like that earth perfect apple pie of hers. Bringing infinite sadnesses.]       

Or of the hard-hilled climb, and climb and climb, breathe taken away magic climb, crevice-etched, rock-interface, sore-footed magic mountain that no Thomas Mann can capture. Half-walked-half-driven, bouncing back seat, back seat of over-filled truck-driven, still rising up, no passing on the left, facing sheer-cliff’d, famous free-fall spots, still rising, rising colder, rising frozen colder, fearful of the sudden summer squalls, white out summer squalls. Shocking, I confess, beyond shocking to New England-hardened winter boy, then sudden sunshine floral bursts and jacket against the cold comes tumbling off. And I confess again, majestic, did I say majestic and beats visions of old Atlantic Ocean swells at dawn crashing against harmless seawalls. Old pioneer-trekked, old pioneer-feared, old rutted-wheeled, two-hearted remembrances, two-hearted but no returning back (it would be too painful to do again) remembrances as you slide out of Denver into the icy-white black rockymountainhigh night.

[Walking daddy walked down Larimer Street, thousand flavor western cowboy hats strewn on thousand cowboy heads against his eastern Jack Kennedy-flavored bare head, barrooms on every corner not seen since Southie drunks before the high tide swept drunks away and brought forth weed, sister, cousin, what did the poet call it, god peyote, no wines but whiskey straights, maybe a water chaser (or beer chaser if in the chips) also like old times, pool-halls, slender, lanky cowboys, one foot up against the wall yelling “shoot pools.”  Betting dollars and drinks, and in walks the ghost of Neal Cassidy, all golden- boy good looks, cowboy hatted, twirling a key chain with about sixteen car keys like he was some big- time car dealer, or hot rod daddy. And she, some blond out of Lizabeth Scott Hollywood, all husky- voiced and soft contours hanging on his arm.  She unhinged herself from golden cowboy, gave him sweet kisses good luck and headed walking daddy’s way. And with no eastern shynesses, no coynesses, she sidled up to walking daddy and said “Walking daddy, do you want to walk with me?”  And far out in the Denver night the ghost of Neal Cassidy, the ghost voice of Ms. Lizabeth Scott, and walking daddy took off in the frozen western night, friends, friends for wherever the road would take them.]         

Of foot-swollen pleasures in some arid back canyon arroyo, etched in time told by reading its face, layer after layer, red, red-mucked, beige, beige-mucked, copper, copper-mucked, like some Georgia O'Keeffe dream painting out in the red, beige, copper black-devouring desert night. Sounds, primal sounds, of old dinosaur laments and one hundred generations of shamanic Native American pounding, crying out for vengeance against the desecrations of the land. Against the cowboy badlands takeover, against the white rampages of the sacred soil. And of canyon-shadowed, flame-shadowed, wind- swept, canteen stews simmering and smoky from the jet blue, orange flickering campfire. Of quiet, desert quiet, high desert quiet, of tumbleweed running dreams out in the pure sandstone-edged, grey-black Nevada night.

[A god peyote vision- a starless night, camp fire flamed against the infinite colors of the canyon night barely seen, Jack and Mattie playing some ethereal music on flute and fiddle, the wind begins to howl, they pass pipes filled with dream dust, and hear ten thousand -year old sounds, sounds like ancient apache warriors, untamed, undefeated, spreading their rage as they moved, moved west, then the mystery sounds of tom-toms, warrior- ready beats, warriors ready to take what the earth has deemed theirs before the beggared white man came and killed time and land and whatever else he could use, Jack , Mattie, and walking daddy, now permanently named walking daddy, get up and begin a warrior dance, out of step, out of synch, out of beat with the wind and tom-toms until they get up to speed, then, warrior proud they are ready to avenge history, then suddenly the winds die down, the tom-toms fade and the trio fall in a heap, exhausted . An omen?]      

And then....

the great Western shore, surf’s up, white, white wave-flecked, lapis-lazuli blue-flecked ocean, rust golden-gated, no return, no boat out, land’s end, this is it coast highway, heading down or up now, heading up or down gas stationed, named and unnamed, side road diners, still caboose’d, ravine-edged sleep and beach sleeped, blue-pink American West night.

Yes, but there is more. No child vision but now of full blossom American West night, the San Francisco great American West night, of the be-bop, bop-bop, narrow-stepped, downstairs overflowed music cellar, shared in my time, the time of my time, by “beat” jazz, “hippie’d folk”, and howled poem, but at this minute jazz, high white note-blown, sexed sax-playing godman, unnamed, but like Lester Young’s own child jazz. Smoke-filled, blended meshed smokes of ganja and tobacco (and, maybe, of meshed pipe smokes of hashish and tobacco), ordered whisky-straight up, soon be-sotted, cheap, face-reddened wines, clanking coffee cups that speak of not tonight promise. High sexual intensity under wraps, tightly under wraps, swirls inside its own mad desire, already spoken of black-dressed she (black dress, black sweater, black stockings, black shoes, black bag, black beret, black sunglasses, ah, sweet color scheme against white Madonna, white, secular Madonna alabaster skin. What do you want to bet black undergarments too, ah, but I am the soul of discretion, your imagination will have to do), promising shades of heat-glanced night. And later, later than night just before the darkest hour dawn, of poems poet’d, of freedom songs free-verse’d, of that sax-charged high white note following out the door, out into the street, out into the eternity lights of the great golden-gated night. I say, can you blame them or me?

[And down on Bay Street, heading to some sleek Embarcadero rendezvous, maybe grab a room, a flop, or just head to the aquarium break-water jut, hunkered down against the fierce bay winds, the dead- celled Alcatraz  beacon, endlessly shining on the innocent, against Bay mists and fogs, fog- horned tankers gliding unseen beneath rusted golden gates, or the look of rusted gates in daytime, and Japan currents, she, mary mack all dressed in black, or something like that, undergarments included, she and he try to follow that high white note heading out to some final bay funeral, try to follow that place where nirvana lived, where the jailbreak 1960s led them, and for a while they avidly pursued that be-bop night, maybe spending a little too much time at the doors of perception, maybe, hell. not maybe, ingesting just too many drugs to catch that sainted sax player’s note without complications and so they drifted apart, back, apart, back, nobody says that Alcatraz jail-break was going to easy and then after a while the music could not sustain that ragged night.]              

Of later roads, the north Oregon hitchhike roads, the Redwood-strewn road not a trace of black-dressed she, she now of blue serge denim pants, of brown plaid flannel long-sleeved shirt, of some golfer’s dream floppy-brimmed hat, and of sturdy, thick-heeled work boots (undergarments again left to your imagination) against the hazards of summer snow squall Crater Lake. And now of slightly sun-burned face against the ravages of the road, against the parched sun-devil road that no ointments can relieve. And beyond later to goose-down bundled, hunter-hatted, thick work glove-clad, snowshoe-shod against the tremors of the great big eternal bump of the Alaska highway. Can she blame me? Guess.

[Everybody took that ‘Frisco road, and took that ‘Frisco road out when the weirdness started, when the freak- outs came a mile a minute, when the bad ass cartel hermanos came norte, when the black brothers determined who was cool in the fogged night (and who was not) and poetry and posters and slogans and banners and, and whatever, lost their way and called for westward ho but there was no westward ho so they, he and she, headed out of cramped ‘Frisco, looked to the north, Eureka  north, Roseburg north, Portland north, almost to Seattle north and then all bleeding and bruised Mount Rainier in front of them she heard her own high white note, heard some strange mountain wind of her own, some, what did she call it, some Jack London call of the wild, and he went with her, went with her for a while anyway, and then, city boy afraid of no city lights, afraid of the silence (no cars, jesus, no cars), and turned back … alone, and he never saw that black Madonna again.]         

Yah, put it that way and what does that young hobo angel, a dreamer of his own dreams, and rightly too, know of an old man’s fiercely-held, fiercely-defended, fiercely-dreamed beyond dreaming blue-pink dreams. Or of ancient blue-pink sorrows, sadnesses, angers, joys, longings and lovings, either.