Visions of Code-y

 

Sitting in a coffee bar, I was hit on by a Kerouac simulation.

I am the nightbird genius mix, said FauxJack,

clearly hopped up on lollipops. 

Do tell, said I. 

So babe, what's on your emotional jukebox?

Some kind of dubious doo-wah Dada bop?

Maybe.

You're like smoke, there's rise in your eyes.

And you try too hard.

Auughh! Gutshot, right in the LOLcode. Want me to fade?

No, as a matter of fat, I've read all your graphic novels, FakeJay.

You're a real Ker-Ker-Karma Chameleon.

They call me Cat George, mama. Imma thicc throwback skellychaser!

You don't say.

Don't armadillo me, hard candy. 

This is love-a-rooni, jive jazz Nirvanaville, hep kitty.

Hep. Oh, I like that.

The double yellow asphalt ribbon is callin', Gypsy Rose.

To-go that java and jump immediate!

You're on, daddy.

Ergo the ersatz ecstasy, holo-hipster. 

Aw Athena, now you're blowin' a sweet riff! 

That's me, Riff Tin Tin. Awoooooooo!

You are off the leash! 

Faux man go. Let's split before the squares hack your dome, Jack.

____________

for Word Garden Word List--Janis Ian. 

Music: Eddie Harris Sham Time

Dharma Baby

With milk stirred into my tomato soup, I was wild as a landscaped yard,
worldly as a tabby kitten.
Still, venomous lies thorned my pulse with the odd fist thrown in for punctuation.

Staying corner-quiet as the vacuum slammed the baseboards a room away,
I searched for a kind of touch on the bottom book shelves.
As soon as I could, I went feral, a lonesome library hider ghosting the book store, on my way to a gifting high of pages and substances,
a bad apple for a sick teacher.

Kerouac and other people's cars, coolers of beer,
paperbacks on the back seat, center lines snaking by,
these were my caduceus and my catechism.
I ate Vonnegut,
drank Brautigan,
shot up Burroughs,
fucked Ferlinghetti but not my road companions.

My boozy keepers kept me from a thousand mistakes.
Off all summer from their classrooms, 
they had no wives to explain shit to, 
just me in the hungover mornings, useless and funny as a three-legged cat.

I almost died.
Wrote some tripe in blood and got it published.
Joined a book club and the human race,
married wrong, raised a child,
kept my books like holy relics, poetry bones on which I learned to stand and stumble and survive.

I built a new heart out of sentences,
slept with other women,
changed my name, went too far but did it sober.
"Why do you keep these old books?"
Because they are life rafts,
holy texts,
soul food,
lovers who never leave.
They are me and I am them, a bad crowd lit with halos.

You can go if you want,
I am beyond injury anymore.
The nurses here make bedding from chapbooks,
whisper soft as pages turning,
are immortal,
and know my name.

4/18/2020
________________

for the Sunday Muse #104 where I am hosting.