Happy, Happy 100^th Birthday Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti-Max Daddy Of Famed “City Lights Bookstore” In “Beat” San Francisco When It Counted And Muse Of His Generation’s Poets

By Liam Leahy

When the deal went down the hell with street ruffian and gangster of words and thefts Gregory Corso, the hell with Zen Buddha lotus flowers sulks Gary Snyder, the hell with bright lights in the headlights like some virgin Bambi Mike McClure, double the hell with clear the coffeehouses and jazz bars out with his primal wailing to Keil, devil servant, Phil Larkin, ditto double the hell with trying to hit that high white note that only jazz boys and girls can aspire to MaJohn Dupree, back to single hells for Dante boys all choir practice glow bum-tucked like Kenneth Rexforth (and don’t forget Rexforth’s daughter who everybody took a run at and why not even gay boys like Ginsberg), to hell as well the drag queen artless Tim Riley before he fanned the flames of Miss Judy Garland’s hem and made bluegrass green in ocean spray to the China seas bays filled with oil tankers and sodomites sing his naughty boy praises. And in the end, the bookend three hot dog fucks like Miss Julie Johnson in some Joe and Nemo alley.

More retrospective, more circumspect rumbling fullback out of some Merrimack estuary looking hot dog hungry, looking like some holy goof displaced out of European DP camps and he only Icelandic run bound dropping to the titanic seas.  So Jack, Jack, Kerouac, the fuck with that Jack stuff Ti Jean of ten million Allan Ginsberg dreams and Neal Cassidy lost father’s gets some play, okay  Very much more circumspect and there is no way around it this time Moloch of modern times stripping poor Tom Eliot of everything but his shoddy bedding and his lost in the hills and trenches of Eastern France cursive language as wave after wave fell to complete one square yard Carl Solomon’s dear friend and his mother howler in the dust for all the good it did him, or her, Allan Ginsberg. Yeah, the beat down, beat around, beat sound, beatitude beat to hear holy goof Jack tell it in his Tanqueray funks, crowd that took up plenty of air come 1950s in the states come desolation row time.

Then there was the glue, the guy who kept the torch bright, the guy who had enough knowledge of business which almost to a man (or woman of that matter), beats heating squares up like toast, scorned except come poetry reading time some foggy and rainy nights, book signing when Random House said piss off, putting money in the bucket for the Thunderbird struck nights, back room shacking up to keep from the coldest days in August world. Yeah, Happy Birthday Baby, Buddha in cowboy boots and tepid wrangler jeans Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the magic 100 years. Connection,  brother, connection.