Ancient Dreams, Dreamed-To The Tune Of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl

Ancient Dreams, Dreamed-To The Tune Of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl     

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:

Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.

*******

Ancient dreams, dreamed.

Yah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff from youthful reading too many Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe tough guy detective stories, or chasing after Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade for that matter, and far too many Saturday afternoon double-feature matinees at the old Strand Theater uptown woman monikers, and just call her a woman, and be done with it. Such women (frail, etc., okay) will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what, and not just guys who did not know what was what but guys who had been around a bit, had tasted the fruits, hell, knew the score, or thought they did. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair, you know the big step off jolt chair, the ‘lectric chair, kind of smiling, okay maybe just half-smiling thinking about that scent he could smell even in that last dingy cellblock although he had not smelled that smell in the flesh in years.

Frank, Frank Corbett (but read: future Markins and a million, more or less, other guys) had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora (excuse the anachronism) walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and the then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white on that hot summer day, no breeze to be had except hers, in 1946. She may have been just another blonde, very blonde, (and a real blonde, always a question in the back of every guy’s mind as he would find out to his satisfaction once they hit the satin sheets) frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale to our boy, our boy Frank with the big hungry eyes. I, Peter Paul Markin, swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled, yelled through the womb or from some toddler’s crib maybe, how would I know, all I know is that I did, at the movie screen that year for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end. Play his hand out right up to the big step-off smile, half-smile whether I had yelled or not. And hence my own Frank troubles from that day forward:    

Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window “the projects” apartment, a place built on “wait on better times, get a leg up, don’t get left behind in the dawning American streets paved with gold dreams” but for now just a hang your hat dwelling, small, too small for three growing boys with hearty appetites and desires to match even then, warm, free-flow oil spigot warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother kinship sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching, relentlessly marching as he, that older brother he, went off to foreign places, foreign elementary school reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic places and, he, the nose flattened against the window brother, is left to ponder his own place in those kind of places, those foreign-sounding places, when his time comes. If he has a time, has the time for the time of his time, in this red scare (but what knows he of big red scare Cold War doing heard on some gloomy radio and later seen on some gloomy black and white small television, only brother scares), cold war, cold nose, dust particles floating aimlessly in the clogging still air night.

More.  A cloudless day, a cloudless blasted eternal, infernal Korean War day, talk of peace, merciless truce peace and talk of uncles, cold war, cold feet, cold bite, coming home in the air, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, fields for slides and swings, diamonded baseball, no, friendlier softball fields the houses are too close, mixed in with thoughts of gimps, glues, cooper-plated portraits of wildly-maned horses, of sweet shaded elms, starting, now that he too, that nose-flattened brother, has been to foreign places, strange boxed rooms filled with the wax and wane of learning, simple learning, in the time of his time, to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means that, and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes, but changes.

Nighttime fears, red-flagged Stalin-named fears, red bomb aimed right at his head unnamed shelter blast fears, named, vaguely named, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg hated stalinite jews killed fears [laughing thoughts fifty years later of Allan’s one million Trotskyites mushrooming on American negro streets, sorry brother, off by almost a million], jews killed our catholic lord fears, and what did they do wrong to get the chair, the ‘lectric chair just like Frank, did they cause somebody like Cora to be killed, anyway fears against the cubed glass glistening flagless flag-pole rattling dark asphalt school yard night. Alone, and, and, alone with fears, and avoidance, clean, clear stand alone avoidance of old times sailors, tars, sailors’ homes AND deaths in barely readable fine- marked granite-grey lonely seaside graveyards looking out on ocean homelands and lost booty. Dead, and the idea of dead, the mystery of dead, and of sea sailor dead on mains, later stream thoughts of bitch proctoresses, some unnamed faraway crush teacher who crossed my path and such, in lonely what did he do wrong anyway prison cells, smoking, reading, writing of the mystery of why dinosaurs die and other laments. Dead.

Endless walks, endless one way sea street water rat-infested fear seawall walks, rocks, shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells, swaying grasses in light breezes to the right, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat stinks to the left making hard the way, the path, the symbolic life path okay, to uptown drug stores, some forgotten chain-name drug store, passing perfumes, lacquers, counter drugs, ailments cured, hurts fixed and all under a dollar, trinkets ten cents baubles, gee-gads, strictly gee-gads, grabbing, two-handed grabbing, heist-stolen valentines, a metaphor in the making for future conned hearts without the valentines, ribbon and bow ruby-red valentine night bushel, signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, if only she, about five candidates she, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head, sticks all, no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet. Man emerging out of the ooze, and hope.

Still more. Walks, endless waiting bus stop, old late, forever late, story of a young boy’s life late, diesel-fueled, choking fumed non-stop bus stop walks, no golden age car for jet moves in American Dream wide-fin, high tech automatic drive nights, walks, walks up crooked cheap, low-rent, fifty-years not fix rutted pavement streets, deeply gouged, one-lane snow-drift hassles, you get the picture, pass trees are green, coded, secretly coded even fifty rutted street years later, endless trees are green super-secret-coded except for face blush waiting, waiting against boyish infinite time, infinite first blush of innocent manhood, boyhood times, gone now. For what? For one look, one look, and not a quick no-nonsense, no dice look, no time for ragamuffin boys either that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots. And no dance, no coded trees are green dance, either, no high school confidential (hell elementary school either, man), handy man, breathless, Jerry Lee freak-out, at least no potato sack stick dance with coded name trees are green brunette. That will come, brother, that will come. But when?

City square, any-town America, his American city square, filled with no  trespassing- police take notice signs meant his eyes, his sneak-thief eyes on the hunt for trinkets, the first in a long line of trinkets to dazzle some forlorn damsel, not so different from Frank, Frank from the movies when he got his wanting habits on, his chaste wanting habits which would build to those lust wants that drove Frank to the big step,   no standing either, no standing in front of low-slung granite buildings everywhere, bank vault exterior solid buildings, granite steps leading to granite doors leading to granite gee-gad counters, hated, no name hated, low-head hated, waiting slyly, standing back on heels, going in furtively, coming out ditto, presto coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carats, fools’ gold didn’t you know that was your station, no russkie Sputnik panel glitter for his efforts such is the way of young lumped-up crime, no value, no look for value, just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab to get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark, dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dreams make no more sense that this bodily theft. Those damn trinket thefts would do him in, if he was not careful.

First interlude: A bridge too far, an unarched, unsteeled, unspanned, unnerved bridge too far. One speed bicycle boy, Schwinn maybe, or low-sling English racer that was all the rage, dungarees before they became jeans and sleek, rolled up against dog bites and geared meshes, churning through endless heated, sweated, no handkerchief streets, names, all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea, names. Twelve-year old hard churned miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old drifter, grifter, midnight shifter petty larceny friends, that’s all it was, petty and maybe larceny, hard against the named ships, hard against the named seas, hard against the named fishes, hard against the named fauna, hard against the unnamed angst, hard against those changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once like some mack the knife smack devilish thing.

Then back to business, back to trinket worries (and sprouting up like no tomorrow, underarms stenches, daily lathers, acrid mouth, unkempt, cow-licked hair sans Wild Root solutions worries before he even got out the door). Si, lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, maybe later, just some junior league dream fuss though, some future cheerleader football dame though (smelling of Raymond Chandler influences and Bogie growls), some sweated night pastry crust and he, too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before his time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic cheerleader windows. Such is the new decade a-borning, a-borning but not for him, no jack swagger, or bobby goof as they run the table on old tricky dick or some tired imitation of him. Me, I’ll take exotics, or lindos, if they every cross my path, my lonely only path.

Moving on. Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic cheerleader glance nights but something else, something not endless walked about, something done, or with the promise of done, for something inside, for some sense of worth in the this moldy white tee shirt, mildewy white shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, Chuck Taylor sneakers, pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval, watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then. Later, in bobby darin times or percy faith times, who knows, sitting, sitting high against the lion-guarded pyramid statute front door dream, common dreams, common tokyo dreams, all gone asunder, all gone asunder, on this curious fact, no wind, Irish or otherwise. Stopped short. Who would have figured that one?

Main street walked, main street public telephone booth cheap talk walked searching for some Diana, greek goddess, wandering wholesale on the atlantic streets. Diana, blonde Diana, cashmere-sweatered, white tennis –shoed Diana, million later Dianas although not with tennis shoes, really gym shoes fit for old ladies to do their rant, their lonely rant against the wind. Seeking, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out; nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, a small-time after school soda split sitting at the counter Doc’s drugstore date, or slice of pizza and a coke date at Balducci’s with a few nickels juke-boxed in playing our song, our future song, a Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall song, and dreams of I Want To Wanted sifting the hot afternoon air, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore car parked submarine races and mysteries unfurled, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on senior errands. No way, no way and then red-face, alas, red-faced no known even forty years later. Wow.

Multi-colored jacket worn, red and black, black and red, some combination reflecting old time glories, or promises of glory, cigarette, Winston small-filtered, natch, no romantic Bogie tobacco-lipped unfiltered blends, hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee, if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Move out the act onto Boston fresh-mown streets. Finally, that one minute, no, not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of the fame game, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson learned, very tough. And not yet twenty.

Drunk, whisky drunk, whisky rotgut whisky drunk, in some bayside, altantic bayside, not childhood atlantic bayside though, no way, no shawlie way, bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish, although who could have known that then. Who could have known that Tet, Lyndon, Bobby, Hubert, tricky dick war-circus all hell broke loose thing then, or wanted to.

Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no on hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, no earthy good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light.

Second interlude: The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black Madonna of a night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, not Winston filter-tipped seductions, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little. Free at last but with a very, very sneaking feeling that this is a road less traveled for a reason, and not for ancient robert frost to guide you… Just look at blooded Kent State, or better, blooded Jackson State. Christ.

Return. Bloodless bloodied streets, may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.

Chill chilly nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais, Monktons, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas’ flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarcaderos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern walls. And enough of short-wave radio beam tricky dick slaughters south of the border in deep fall nights. Enough, okay.

Third Interlude: He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1917, he said it in 1973. Whee, an old guy, huh.

Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored antic newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.

A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million times in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Yah, that seems right, right against the oil-beggared time, right.

Lashed against the high end double seawall, bearded, slightly graying against the forlorn time, a vision in white not enough to keep the wolves of time away, the wolves of feckless petty larceny times reappear, reappear with a vengeance against the super-rational night sky and big globs of ancient hurts fester against some unknown enemy, unnamed, or hiding out in a canyon under an assumed name. Then night, the promise of night, a night run up some seawall laden streets, some Grenada night or maybe Lebanon sky boom night, and thoughts of finite, sweet flinty finite haunt his dreams, haunt his sleep. Wrong number, brother. Yah, wrong number, as usual.

Fourth Interlude: White truce flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more war-weary dastardly fight against Persian Gulf oil-driven time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other guy he said struggle, struggle. Yah, easy for you to say.

Desperately clutching his new white flags, his 9/11 white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.

One more battle, one more, please one more, one fight against the greed party night. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief. Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic hand-cuff-like stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora (now no anachronism) whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known that then.

From The Archives-Proposed Massachusetts Peace Walk Route-Thursday October 27th to Monday October 31st –“Stop The Wars Against Mother Nature”

Proposed Massachusetts Peace Walk Route-Thursday October 27^th to Monday October 31^st –“Stop The Wars Against Mother Nature”    

****Day One- Thursday October 27^th (Portsmouth to Hampton 15.6 miles

Walkers stay at Pat Scanlon’s house in York after finish of Maine portion of Peace Walk on the night of Wednesday October 26^th and are shuttled to Prescott Park. Possible support and sleep arrangements from Portsmouth which was the host for the last day of the Maine walk in 2015   

Meet at Prescott Park in Portsmouth at 8:30 AM to walk through downtown Portsmouth to MacDonald’s on Route 1 (left on Marcy to Court Street, left on Pleasant, Congress, right on Junkins pass City Hall to right on South, left onto Lafayette Road) to pick up Route One South (Lafayette Road). 3.2 miles

Continue on Route One (Lafayette Road) from MacDonald’s to Lago’s Ice Cream about 3 miles

Continue on Route One Lago’s Ice Cream to Junction of NH 111 USA about 3.3 miles for lunch stop shopping mall on left (also place for car forwarding parking)    

Continue on Route One from Junction of 111 to Junction of Route 27 (gazebo on right past Lamie’s) 3 miles

Continue on Route One from Junction of 27 (gazebo on right past Lamie’s) for three miles to take left for about a mile on Exeter Road. Sleeping arrangements, supper and program in Hampton still need contacts and work 

****Day Two Friday Oct 28^th (Hampton to House Of Peace High Street Ipswich) about 16.6 miles

Meet at entrance to Seabrook Power Plant for short rally/vigil (need updated information on how to get there- where we are permitted to stand, etc. at the facility)

Start walking from Exeter Road (on Route I) to Dunkin Donuts 3.9 miles

Dunkin Donuts (Route I) to Newburyport Rotary past downtown- Stop for lunch 3.4 miles

Shuttle from Rotary about three miles and start walking again to Intersection Route 1 & 133 Rowley Agawam Diner) 3miles

Intersection Route 1 and 133 Rowley to I High Street, Ipswich 4 miles  

Sleeping arrangements at House Of Peace, program and supper at UCC Church Ipswich  

****Day Three Saturday October 29^th Ipswich to Salem about 14 miles

Meet at 9:00 AM at 1 High Street to walk down North Main Street to Route 1A to Hamilton Town Hall (3.7 miles)

Continue on Route 1A- Hamilton Town Hall to Mall/Wenham Lake Wenham (3.2. miles)-Stop for lunch 

Continue down Route 1A from Wenham Lake, Wenham to Beverley Train Depot, Beverly (3.5 miles) (or UCC Church a couple of streets over)

Continue of Route I A Beverley Train Depot to Salem Old Town Hall (3 miles)

Sleeping arrangement, supper and program in Salem could change finishing point

****Day Four Sunday Oct 30^th -Salem Old Town Hall to Revere Beach (13 miles)

Salem Old Town Hall back to Route IA To Route 114 to Preston Beach 450 Atlantic Avenue via Lafayette Avenue Maple to Humphrey Street to Rockaway to Atlantic Avenue (3.5 miles)

Preston Beach follow Atlantic Avenue to Ocean Street Lynn to Nahant Rotary (3.5 miles) Stop for Lunch 

Nahant Rotary to Point of Pines via the left side of road on Lynnway to Point of Pines exit and parking lot 2.8 miles

Point of Pines to Revere Beach Parkway 

Sleeping arrangements, supper and program TBA (could be in area but being close to Boston other possibilities might come up. Also use of public transportation-MBTA comes into play if necessary) 

****Day Five Monday October 31^st -Revere Beach To Boston Common via  Cambridge Friends’ Meeting House and walk through college Cambridge (16 miles)

Meet at Revere Beach Parkway location by 7AM for shuttle to GE plant rally/vigil for one hour as workers arrive at work ((need to update where we can stand for rally/vigil and shift start times.

Shuttle back to Revere Beach Parkway to continue walk-Revere Beach Parkway to park past Wellington Circle  on Route 16  3.4 miles

Park to Cambridge Friends’ Meeting House via Route 16, cut to Davis Square (Hammond Street) to Mass Ave to Cambridge Common to 5 Longfellow

Cambridge Friends to Mass Ave Harvard Square, Central Square, MIT over Mass Ave Bridge onto Storrow Drive walkway to Hatch Shell over Fiedler Bridge to Boston Public Gardens to Park Street Boston Common for vigil/rally

Sleeping arrangements if necessary, supper and program by shuttle at Friends’ Meeting House, 5 Longfellow Road, Cambridge or Friends’ Meeting House Beacon Hill   

Frank Jackman’s Bernie Sanders “Stump Speech To All Who Will Listen Whatever Front He Finds Himself On In The Coming Months-Bernie Vision 2020 Boston from the heart and here today to testify, to give my reasons for supporting the Senator:

Frank Jackman’s Bernie Sanders “Stump Speech To All Who Will Listen Whatever Front He Finds Himself On In The Coming Months-Bernie Vision 2020 Boston from the heart and here today to testify, to give my reasons for supporting the Senator:

Recently I wrote and have begun doing a stump speech wherever people gather for political purposes giving my personal reasons for supporting Senator Sanders presidential candidacy. I have dubbed that speech ‘the defense of the republic” oration where my motivation centrally was the need to get rid of the current president as a matter of elementary hygiene and to avoid a now brewing cold civil war from turning hot. There I played to the Senator’s and my long time struggles in defense of the international progressive agenda against the endless wars, for social justice and the struggle against want which hold many people back for no purpose, sometimes as voices in the wilderness, sometimes with many at our respective backs.  

One unspoken truth which is common to both the Senator’s and my sense of the world, probably a hallmark of our generation, the remnants of the Generation of ’68 is a serious desire to NOT discuss, not to profile our individual lives, what makes us tick, what gets us on the picket lines, the rally points, the march routes. The background of our staying close to our roots all these years. With the partial exception of his kick-off campaign speech at Brooklyn College back in March he has held to that position although I have noticed he has lightened up a little of late. At some point, probably the point where I decided to write that first stump speech, I took it upon myself to get more personal, to tell why I have stayed so close to my roots in the social struggles of my lifetime. I might mention that I repeatedly have told whoever would listen in the Sanders campaign apparatus to have him concentrate on his compelling American story to better link up with the electorate in this the time when bearing one’s soul is fit for discussion, is part of the political landscape.

One thing that struck me, the key thing, that struck me about the Senator’s Brooklyn speech is toward the end, probably kicking and screaming at his advisers all the time, was when told the crowd “he knew where he came from,” knew he came from down in the dust of society. A father who immigrated to this country just in front of the Nazi onslaught which would take most of his family into the concentration camps and death, a man with no money in his pocket but an overweening desire to make it in America. The Senator grew up in that three- and one-half room rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn and that was that. No that was not that for here is the very personal link between the Senator and me. His mother like many post- World War II mothers dreamed of having her own single-family home before she passed away at an early age. It never happened. I grew up in and came of age  the Germantown projects in Quincy. My mother too in our desperate projects housing had the single family home dream which never happened for her either.

That’s the joiner but there is more. The Senator spoke of never having enough for extras, for having something like a quarter weekly allowance as a kid (against Trump’s massive allowance). Never being hungry or on the streets, nor was my family but always being ground down by the terrible struggle for necessities, for curbing the basic wants which in the richest society in the world should have been fulfilled as part of the social contract. I could go on but let me finish with this example. My father a Marine veteran of World War II had been a coalminer down in Appalachia, down in the hills and hollows of legendary Hazard, Kentucky before the war, a hillbilly who did not get pass the tenth grade. He was stationed at the Naval Depot in Hingham before he was discharged, met my mother and that was that. He stayed North always being the last hired and first fired as long as I could remember.           

My frantic young mother, totally unprepared for motherhood, did the best she could. That best she could when my father was unemployed, and no work was to be had. When there was work come each Friday paycheck she would put out white envelopes with the bill to be paid listed on the front. I don’t ever remember her being able to do any better that giving each collector enough to keep the wolves from the door. I could tell things were really bad when she would send me, maybe I was ten or eleven over to the projects office to pay the rent, pay something anyway, she was too embarrassed to go herself. Yes, Senator Sanders knows that story too well, a variation anyway and we have to stop that wanting habits hunger, and right now too. He knows where he came from as do I and have stayed close to the roots. I am proud to stand beside him.    

    

From The Archives- Proposed Massachusetts Peace Walk Route-Thursday October 27th to Monday October 31st –“Stop The Wars Against Mother Nature”

Proposed Massachusetts Peace Walk Route-Thursday October 27^th to Monday October 31^st –“Stop The Wars Against Mother Nature”    

****Day One- Thursday October 27^th (Portsmouth to Hampton 15.6 miles

Walkers stay at Pat Scanlon’s house in York after finish of Maine portion of Peace Walk on the night of Wednesday October 26^th and are shuttled to Prescott Park. Possible support and sleep arrangements from Portsmouth which was the host for the last day of the Maine walk in 2015   

Meet at Prescott Park in Portsmouth at 8:30 AM to walk through downtown Portsmouth to MacDonald’s on Route (left on Marcy to Court Street, left on Pleasant, Congress, right on Junkins pass City Hall to right on South, left onto Lafayette Road) to pick up Route One South (Lafayette Road) to first break at Wilson Road. 3.2 miles

Continue on Route One (Lafayette Road) from MacDonald’s to Lago’s Ice Cream about 3 miles

Continue on Route One Lago’s Ice Cream to Junction of NH 111 USA about 3.3 miles for lunch stop shopping mall on left (also place for car forwarding parking)    

Continue on Route One from Junction of 111 to Junction of Route 27 (gazebo on right past Lamie’s) 3 miles

Continue on Route One from Junction of 27 (gazebo on right past Lamie’s) for three miles to take left for about a mile on Exeter Road. Sleeping arrangements, supper and program in Hampton still need contacts and work. Right now walkers will be shuttled back to the Friends’ Meeting  House in Dover   

****Day Two Friday Oct 28^th (Hampton to House Of Peace High Street Ipswich) about 16.6 miles

Shuttle from Dover Friends’ Meeting House to meet at 9:00 AM at entrance to Seabrook Power Plant for short rally/vigil (need updated information on how to get there- where we are permitted to stand, etc. at the facility)

Start walking from Exeter Road (on Route I) to Dunkin Donuts 3.9 miles

Dunkin Donuts (Route I) to Newburyport Rotary past downtown- Stop for lunch 3.4 miles

Shuttle from Rotary about three miles and start walking again to Intersection Route 1 & 133 Rowley Agawam Diner) 3miles

Intersection Route 1 and 133 Rowley to I High Street, Ipswich 4 miles  

Sleeping arrangements at House Of Peace, program and supper at UCC Church Ipswich  

****Day Three Saturday October 29^th Ipswich to Salem about 14 miles

Meet at 9:00 AM at 1 High Street to walk down North Main Street to Route 1A to Hamilton Town Hall (3.7 miles)

Continue on Route 1A- Hamilton Town Hall to Mall/Wenham Lake Wenham (3.2. miles)-Stop for lunch 

Continue down Route 1A from Wenham Lake, Wenham to Beverley UCC Church (3.5 miles).

Continue UCC Church to Salem Old Town Hall (3 miles). Shuttle back to UCC Church for sleeping arrangement, supper and program.

****Day Four Sunday Oct 30^th -Salem Old Town Hall to Revere Beach (13 miles)

Shuttle from UCC to Salem Old Town Hall back to Route IA To Route 114 to Preston Beach 450 Atlantic Avenue via Lafayette Avenue Maple to Humphrey Street to Rockaway to Atlantic Avenue (3.5 miles)

Preston Beach follow Atlantic Avenue to Ocean Street Lynn to Nahant Rotary (3.5 miles) Stop for Lunch 

Nahant Rotary to Point of Pines via the left side of road on Lynnway to Point of Pines exit and parking lot 2.8 miles

Point of Pines to Revere Beach Parkway 

Sleeping arrangements, supper and program TBA (Right now shuttle to Cambridge Friends’ Meeting House for sleeping arrangements, supper and program could be in area but being close to Boston other possibilities might come up. Also use of public transportation-MBTA comes into play if necessary) 

****Day Five Monday October 31^st –Shuttle to Revere Beach Parkway rotary  To Boston Common via  Cambridge Friends’ Meeting House and walk through college Cambridge (16 miles)

Shuttle back to Meet at Revere Beach Parkway rotatory by 7AM for shuttle to GE plant rally/vigil for one hour as workers arrive at work ((need to update where we can stand for rally/vigil and shift start times).

Shuttle back to Revere Beach Parkway from GE plant to continue walk-Revere Beach Parkway to park past Wellington Circle  on Route 16  3.4 miles

Mystic Park to Cambridge Friends’ Meeting House via Route 16, cut to Davis Square (Hammond Street) to Mass Ave to Cambridge Common to 5 Longfellow for lunch.

Cambridge Friends to Mass Ave Harvard Square, Central Square, MIT over Mass Ave Bridge onto Storrow Drive walkway to Hatch Shell over Fiedler Bridge to Boston Public Gardens to Park Street Boston Common for vigil/rally

Sleeping arrangements if necessary, supper and program at Friends’ Meeting House, Beacon Hill.   

From The Archives-Feel The Bern

Okay, Okay It’s The 350^th Anniversary of Rembrandt’s (You Know The Dutch Painter With the Funny Last Name That Nobody Remembers Anyway) So Happy, Happy Birthday Brother

By Sam Lowell

By rights fellow writer here and budding amateur art critic (she insists I put that “amateur in) should be all over this short piece since she is much more involved in this aspect of human culture than I am theses days. Except Dutch painters (Flemish too or whatever they call the Netherlands painters at the art museum near you) leave her cold, do nothing for her despite their oversized place in the art world, at least in art books and generic museums.

Frankly I kind of shared her opinion about these dark color aficionados and their proper prosperous bourgeois subjects, their families, their towns and their inclinations toward showing family life from their home furnishings to their larder (those fish and fowl paintings still give me the willies). Two things changed my mind. One was that after some hiatus from museum-going I started up again and after having it up to my neck with every possible painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the death of Christ, the martyrdoms of the apostles and kindred and the whoredom of subjects like Mary Magdalene from the Middle Ages it was like a breath of fresh air to see even some hoary old bastard of bourgeois, his funky wife, and the general mayhem of urban Dutch society.

The other, strangely, was the theft many years ago of a famous Rembrandt self-portrait (among other stolen treasures taken during that heist) at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston which made me wonder why they had taken that painting. An example as shown here -a masterpiece of composition, lighting, and warts and all approach. So Happy Birthday Rembrandt and I hope they get that painting back to fill up that wall at the Gardner again.     

      

On The 50th Anniversary Of The Passing Of The “King Of The Beats” -Ti Jean Kerouac-A Series Of Appreciations-

On The 50^th Anniversary Of The Passing Of The “King Of The Beats” -Ti Jean Kerouac-A Series Of Appreciations-  

By Contributing Editor Allan Jackson

For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50^th Anniversary Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies"

By Lance Lawrence

[In the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admit that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. I also knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we could see out in the National Mall and later Greenwich Village night.

This piece first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsburg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers, a younger group according to the demographics provided to me by the advertising department when I was trying to figure out where the thing got lost in the fog. Some readers thought because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. Some readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.

There were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of society. Jack Weir because of some West Coast references. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope. All wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him when he went under the ground. Lance Lawrence]

***********

I have seen the best poet of the generation before mine declare that he had seen that the best minds of his generation had turned to mush, turned out in the barren wilderness from which no one returned except for quick stays in safe haven mental asylums. Saw the same Negro streets he saw around Blue Hill Avenue and Dudley Street blank and wasted in the sweated fetid humid Thunderbird-lushed night (and every hobo, vagrant, escapee, drifter and grafter yelling out in unison ‘what is the word-Thunderbird-what is the price forty twice” and ready to jackroll some senior citizen lady for the price-ready to commit mayhem at Park Street subway stations for their “boy,” to be tamped by girl but I will be discrete since the Feds might raid the place sometime looking for the ghost of Trigger Burke who eluded them for a very long time. Thought that those angel-headed hipsters, those hep cats hanging around Times, Lafayette, Dupont, Harvard squares) crying in pools of blood coming out of the wolves-stained sewers around the black corner would never stop bleating for their liquor, stop until they got popular and headed for the sallow lights of Harvard Square where they hustled young college students, young impressionable college students whose parents had had their best minds wasted in the turbid streets of south Long Island (not the West Egg of Gatsby’s dream of conquering everything in sight like any other poor-boy arriviste with too much money and not enough imagination and not East Egg of the fervid elites but anytown, Levitttown of those who would escape to Boston or Wisconsin to face the angel of death up front and say no go, pass, under luminous moons which light up sparks and say to that candid world which could have given a fuck hard times please come again no more.

Saw hipsters cadging wine drinks from sullen co-eds staying out too late in the Harvard Square night who turned out to be slumming from some plebian colleges across the river maybe good Irish girls from frail Catholic parishes with rosaries in their fair-skinned hands and a novena book between their knees who nevertheless has Protestant lusts in their pallid hearts but unrequited (here’s how-they would arrive at the Café Lana with ten bucks and their virginity and leave with both and some guy with dreams of salty sucking blowjobs walking out the backdoor and doing the whack job behind the dumpster –a waste of precious fluids and according to Norman Mailer world-historic fucks which would product the best minds of the next generation all dribbled away). Maybe tasty Jewish girls from the shtetl in not East or West Egg who flocked to the other side of the river and gave Irish guys who previously had dribbled their spunk behind dumpsters after losing out to ten bucks and virginity in tack tickey-tack Catholic girls who refused to give that head that would have brought some of best mind some freaking relief (better not say fucking relief because that would be oxymoronic). Maybe some sullen fair-skinned and blonded Protestant girls who spouted something about one god and no trinities, no god and no trinities and just feel good stuff. All three varieties and yes there were more but who knew of Quakers, Mennonites, lusty Amish girls run away from home, Tantic card-wheelers, and fresh- faced red light district sluts who at least played the game straight-played the cash nexus for pure pleasure and maybe to even up some scores. All-Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, yeah, Quakers (fakirs, fakers and Shakers included), the sluts, Mennonites and yes those lusty red-faced Amish runaways all coming together after midnight far from the negro streets but not far from the all night hustlers and dime store hipsters with their cigar store rings and cheap Irish whiskeys bought on the installment plan who converged around the Hayes-Bickford just a seven league jump from the old end of the line dead of night Redline subway stop in order to keep the angel of death at arms’ length. There to listen until dawn to homosexuality affixed hungry for the keyhole blast or the running sperm fakir poets and slamming singsters fresh out of cheapjack coffeehouses where three chords and two- line rhymes got you all the action you wanted although maybe a little light on the breadbasket sent around to show that you were appreciated. Yeah, now that I think about the matter more closely hard times please come again no more.                    

Saw the angel of death make her appearance one night at the Café Lana and then backstopped the Club Nana to fetch one young thing who warbled like heaven’s own angel. Hipster turned her on to a little sister and the some boy and she no longer warbled but did sweet candy cane tricks for high-end businessmen with homely wives or fruitless ones who had given up that sort of “thing” after the third junior had been born and who were ready to make her his mistress if she would just stop singing kumbaya after every fuck like she was still a freaking warbler, a freaking virgin or something instead of “used” goods or maybe schoolboys whose older brothers took them to her for their first fling at going around the world, welcome to the brotherhood or maybe some old fart who just wanted to relive his dreams before the booze, the three wives and parcel of kids did him in and then the hustler sent her back to the Club Nana to “score” from the club owner who was connected with Nick the dream doper man, the Christ who would get him- and her well –on those mean angel-abandoned death watch streets but who knew that one night at the Hayes (everybody called it just that after they had been there one night, one after midnight night where they had that first cup of weak-kneed coffee replenished to keep a place in the scoreboarded night where hari-kara poets dreamed toke dreams and some Mister dreamed of fresh-faced singer girls looking for kicks. So please, please, hard times come again no more.              

I have seen frosted lemon trees jammed against the ferrous night, the night of silly foolish childhood dreams and misunderstanding about the world, the world that that poet spoke of in a teenage dream of indefinite duration about who was to have who was to have not once those minds were de-melted and made hip  to the tragedies of life, the close call with the mental house that awaits us all.

By Lance Lawrence

Sometimes you just cannot win. Sometimes you just let it pass and other times as now anything less than incarceration or the bastinado will not permit me to say some words on a subject that I care about. Attentive readers of Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s or its sister publication where such material is something like syndicated know that I, and most of the older writers here and for that matter other publications who grew up in the 1950s have some relationship to “the Beats” to Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg above but lesser lights stationed in North Beach, San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York City and other sullen outposts. Know that although we were way too young or too interested in our generation’s salvation-rock and roll music-to be washed clean by the Beats that by some process of osmosis we picked up some of the ideas, words, be-bop, lust, homosexual slang, road terminology. Courtesy of Jack Kerouac and the crowd whether he accepted the honorific “King of the Beats” or like Bob Dylan dubbed by the mass media always looking for a hook “King of the Folkies” for the next generation, the folkie-hippie counterculture abdicated.        

Personally, and I have the scars and restless writerly nights to prove it, I was very second-wave influenced by Kerouac and not only by his most famous book, bible really when the time for such things was ripe, On The Road. Maybe less that books like Big Sur which got me to Todo el Mundo just south of Big Sur and some wild escapades and near fatal escapes toked to the gills on weed or whatever came through the very open door. Influences which have made it natural to recount some of those adventures in print of one sort or another. Natural as well this 50^th anniversary year since Jack Kerouac’s death in 1969 to make a big deal out of that milestone. To write some fresh material as below or to republish some older material. And not just memories of Kerouac’s influence but what I called in one article the “assistant king of the beats” Allan Ginsburg.    

That is where the sometimes you can’t win comes in and the have to “speak to the issue” rears its head as well. Recently both to acknowledge the 50^th anniversary of Kerouac’s passing and to honor Allan Ginsburg’s as well I had an article Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall originally published in Poetry Today in 1997 republished in several publications under the title For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50^th Anniversary Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies."   

In a new introduction to the piece I mentioned that in the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admitted that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. Those were the fast and loose days when everybody wanted to be out somewhere around Big Sur and one day I happened to be in The Lost Way restaurant (now still open under another name serving wholesome food unlike the burgers and fries and beer that sustained us then) and somebody mentioned that Jack’s daughter, unacknowledged daughter as I said, Jan was sitting a few tables away having as I learned later from her had just come from  Pfeiffer Beach which played a role in a few of Jacks’ books. One thing led to another and we wound up taking Jan with us to our digs (house) in Todo el Mundo several miles away.    

That simple fact has now led in 2019 to some fool, a fool with a name very familiar in the age of the Internet of Anonymous, to assume without proof that Jan and I, or Jan and somebody in the house were having an affair, and most probably me. The only “proof” given, maybe asserted is better was that a guy by the name of Johnny Spain told him that he had been there at our house when Jan came tumbling and that we had a party for about four days when booze, sex, and drugs flowed freely. I knew Johnny Spain back in those days so that part is real. He was on the run from the coppers for either drug possession or for assault I forget which since we had a few such characters some our way and as we were not fond of the coppers then, maybe not now either we gave him shelter. Johnny probably saw many things as he imbibed in whatever was around the place, but he would not have seen me hanging with Jan. Simple reason: one Carol Riley forever known as Butterfly Swirl in those times when many of us, including me the Duke of Earl (yes from the 1950s hit single), were carrying monikers to reflect our new-found freedoms was slumming from her perfect wave boyfriend existence down in Carlsbad in the days before young women took to the surf themselves and had come north to see what was happening. Butterfly was very possessive which I didn’t mind but would have ditched me and/or has it out with Jan if we had been having an affair. End of story, well, not quite the end Butterfly returned to Carol and her perfect wave surfer before long after finding out “what was what.”          

This is really where my real ire is hanging though. In that same introduction I mentioned that I also knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days long before he became a professor when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we could see out in the D.C. National Mall and later Greenwich Village night. Like I said that piece which formed the basis for republication first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsburg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers. I gave a few examples of what went awry in the responses. Some readers thought because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. In any case there was no way the staid and high Victorian sensibilities Eliot would know anything about the bohemia of his day except maybe knowing some bonkers Bloomsbury cadre. One would be totally remiss to call him the max daddy of anything as I did in my homage.

Some readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.

There were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of society. The flight from downtrodden home life made worse by plodding square parents whose dreams for their off-spring were life-deadening civil servant jobs although admittedly a step up from the dregs down at the working poor base of society.  Jack Weir because of some West Coast references, the usual suspects North Beach, Big Sur, Todo el Mundo (where Allan Ginsburg never went or never went while I was there, Fillmore Street dreams and drugs, the inevitable Golden Gate reference. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope and self-identification with the downtrodden and the caged inmates at the mental hospitals which he frequented more times than he liked to admit.

All wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd readership who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him, for Allan the sad day when he went under the ground.

That all was twenty some years ago and while those readers responses were stone-cold crazy they at least had the virtue of ignorance since I did not mention the name Allan Ginsburg in the title nor in the piece. Frankly I did not think I had to do so. What, however, is to be made of readers in 2019 who I assume had read my introduction and its named poet in bold print who still believe that I am referring to some other poet, some of them pretty obscure and old school which makes me think these readers were maybe college freshman survey course takers. I won’t go through them all since unlike 1997 where one actually had to write and mail with proper postage whatever was on their minds today they can just flail away and done so many more responses showed up at my in-box.

Here are today’s scratching my head entries. What Sam Lowell a fellow writer here has seen it all in his forty plus years as a film critic calls trolls since they are tied to alternate facts and more importantly whatever they have on their minds, if that is what they have. Maybe they just don’t read introductions or are among the dwindling few who still take umbrage that someone would tout the virtuous of long-time known homosexual when everybody else has moved on, has bought into a very sensible idea that it is nobody else’s business who you love-and now wed. So a few of the rabid went along that line but rather than grab onto Ginsburg have assumed that I was writing about Walt Whitman, since I mentioned the grand civil war and the fate of boys and men including a semi-erotic paean to Abe Lincoln. Of course they got that wrong since Whitman’s ode to Lincoln Oh Captain, My Captain is one of the few truly chaste and un-coded poems he wrote. But that is a classic example of this troll contingent’s faking reality to suit some odd-ball political agenda from we should all run like hell.

It only got worse after Greg Green, site manager for the on-line publications here who in the old hard copy days would have been called the editor, started publishing some of the e-mails which only fueled the flames. Declared open season on reason until on advice of wise Sam Lowell mentioned above who chairs the Editorial Board that sits to clamp down on an editor’s more off-the-wall decisions. To continue a vague off-hand reference to the various Eggs off Long Island Sound got one F. Scott Fitzgerald the brass ring mainly so that Jay Gatsby could be extolled as the upwardly mobile paragon of American virtue for a new century (that is exactly what was said if you can believe that since in the unlamented Jazz Age except for the jazz Jay got himself shot and dumped in some coal bin.) A couple more to make my point since I suddenly realized that to even present these holy goofs, an expression learned at the feet of one Jack Kerouac who had I believe more talented types in mind, but the expression just popped out at me. Yeats, Yeats of all poets drew some fan-dom based on talk of Irish girls losing their virtues in sullen Cape Cod gin mills. How that goes with muse Maude Gonne escapes me. Finally, and at least this person had some literary sense he thought because I mentioned Time Square hipsters, drifters and grifters waking up in sullen midnight sweats looking for some savior not the Lord fixer man to get them well and ready to do an occasional soft-core armed robbery or jack-roll (I was impressed with the sue of that term since nobody uses that expression for a very old trick of taking a slender club or maybe a roll of fisted quarters and bopping some drunk or old lady for their ready cash I was speaking of one Gregory Corso the bandit-poet. Sorry I was reaching for the big Howl and Kaddish master and beautiful lumpen dream Corso was a secondary player back in those long-gone daddy days. Enough. Lance Lawrence]

[Back in 2007 and then in 2017 when we commemorated the 50^th and 60^th anniversaries respectively of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s landmark travel book of a different kind On The Road which ignited a generation maybe two to “hit the road” I was the site manager, then called general editor, a throw-back from the times when American Left History was a hard copy publication. At those times I had been re-reading a series of Ti Jean’s books after senior writer Sam Lowell had pointed out to me that the previous years had been the 50^th and 60^th anniversaries respectively of fellow Jack “beat” brother Allan Ginsberg’s landmark poem (really screed) Howl which for a while took poetry into a different direction which we had neglected to commemorate (and which we did belatedly). Now Sam has again reminded that we have come to a certain commemoration date, the 50^th anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac and we are again in need of evaluation, no, re-evaluating the place of his work, his place as “king of the beats” whether than title fits or not and his place in the sun.    

Of course on those prior occasions I could assign whatever I wanted to whomever I wanted since I was the person who was handing out the assignments. Now after a prolonged internal fight in which I was deposed and sent into “exile” I am back but solely as a contributing editor, not as the person handing out assignments. That task is now in the capable hands of one Greg Green whom I knew over at American Film Gazette many years ago and had brought over a couple of years ago to run the day to day operation here. Greg and I have had our ups and downs especially after I was in desperate straits when I was sent into exile and had no current source of income and had to depend “on the kindnesses of strangers.” But that is past and since I was instrumental in the previous commemorations Greg decided that I should as with a couple of other major projects that I have done since my return oversee the Kerouac death watch this year.   

Needless to say, since this dark cloud anniversary is upon us I have to do a new introduction, a setting of the tone. One thing that I was not able to do when I was overseeing the previous commemorations was to write about something that has haunted me for a long time-how different Jack’s experiences were from those of my parents, from any Acre neighborhood parents despite some very strong similarities between the way he grew up and the way they did. In short they were near contemporaries having all been born and raised in the 1920s and forward. Nevertheless they could not have been more different in their lifestyles and life dreams. It would take their son, and their son’s generation to at least momentarily connect with the older man and what he brought to the table. Maybe the link between “beat” and “hippie” was tenuous, but it was there, and is there fifty years after his passing to the unsettled grave. That will be the thread that runs through this new series. Adieu, Ti Jean.     

*************

Jack fifty tears, fifty years gone in some bastard grave in holy, holy, holy Edson Merrimack River ground busted asunder by holy goofs looking for timely relics, looking for that one word which would spring them into some pantheon, some parity with the king (we will not even mention that other king that animated our dreams for we now speak of parent, parent of class of ’68 dream. Funny non-Catholic ground Lowell given his deep sea dive to right his ship around the beatitudes that the class of ’68 left in the shade if you wished to know. Mere turning in her old Quebec come down to the textile mills from desolate turn of the century farms which gave to the bloody English overlords, another common sticking point against heathen English overrunning the small patch farms with enclosures and encumbered debts devotion grave, with the times out of sorts the young passing before ancient hatreds mother. Not a stranger come the end on Hard Rock Mountain and no place but some stinking trailer benny and that fucking crucifix that never helped anybody that far gone into the haze.

Not strange for assuredly lapsed Catholic cum Buddha swings devotee coming out of Desolation Mountain, Dharma bum frills and assorted other spiritual trips, (won’t even think about that black boy, and he was just a boy, who against some grandmother dreads blew the high white note out to the China Seas, via, well, via Frisco Bay drove the writing, the what, the unvarnished truth  until it drove him into the ground. That and those endless whiskeys and cheap Thunderbird wines when dimes were scarce a few times down on his luck cadging wino bottles from buying for underaged kids, with his bottle the kicker and what the hell if he didn’t go it, didn’t get his some sterno junkie would dip into Salvation Army surplus and the thirst was great. Not “his” thirst but “the” thirst and don’t mix the two up buddy as he told that straggly bearded kid, some hippie bastard from Omaha clueless about the decadent night which lie ahead, the compromises too.

Strangely bisected, fuck finally my real point (another luxury of not having to be general editor with parsing and editing to make “nice” for the academic journals which thrive, which throttle on  Jack’s sputum and can get down in the mud with the real critics like Artie Shaw and Bugs Malone and not worry about half-ablaze in the head, half fire in the head Patti Griffin called it once),  through my own parents too who had no idea of hip, no idea of “beat,” except maybe mother in beatitude but that is a different story, a story about common roots high holy day Catholic stuff. Another common point, emerged in veiled tears, speaking of tears, to rear their ugly heads come feast days. (Wondering if her, their fairy sons would see the light, would submit to the calling that every grandmother hoped without saying leaving it to transient daughters to do their own parsing. Father no hipster born to the hills and hollows which hallowed by memory played no part in big boom beat-beat time coming out of World War II like houses on fire. No speedy cross-country by 1947 Hudson (hell no car a public transportation might as well say welfare crude bum and fuck that is all a guy like that deserved.) With big ideas of shaking things up, making merry with the always with us squares and other geometric forms. Jesus the worst part knowing that they knew not of square or any other geometric dreams. Too bad, too bad when they chance came around and the call went out looking for junkie hipsters, con men and queers hanging around public toilets on Seventh Avenue in New York City.  

No Dean Moriarty, hell call a thing by its right name, no Max Fame, no Allan Ginsberg, no Kenneth Rexforth, no Hank James, or his brother William speaking in tongues trying to figure what a guy named Freud meant when he wanted to go where his mother lived, after killing cosmic fathers and brothers, no Gregory Corso, no John three names somebody a throwback to ancient Boston Brahmin bouts with legitimacy speaking of bastards, trace the genealogy back to Mayfair swells days, nothing for the bastard who is bothering one Laura Perkins who I have been sweet on for an eternity but who only has eyes for Sam Lowell about her sexy takes on serious 19^th century artist who were as capable of going down into the mud, blowing some high white note out in the Japan seas for a change. Above all no Neal Cassidy, no fake Dean Moriarty to skirt the libel laws with wives and mistresses searching for vagrant unknown fathers in some dusty coal bins but a poor old good old boy and maybe in another time said Dean, Adonis Dean against Father Sheik, would have wandered out in the cowboy West night looking for drunken fathers with hip-ness but that was not the play, not at all. Father Sheik coming like a bat out of hell from those hazardous coal bins looking to break the eternal hills and hollows existence that plagued his fathers since the time the first clan were cast out of England for stealing pigs or consorting with them in any case with not unfamiliar family refrain of “leave, or the gallows,” such were the tempers of the times.

And Father Sheik, hell, Adonis Dean too, with no way out except that passport via some Nippon adventure over Pearl always Pearl nothing else needed and he off to Pacific battles and raiments. Jack to the North Seas and merchant marine bunks with odd-ball seasick sailors (and me wondering whether having looked of late at YouTube should attribute my borrowed words but the hell with it plenty of seasick sailors had nothing to do with YouTube or song lyrics). And forsaken Dean too young to know the face of battles hung up in reformatory secret vices which an earlier generation (and later ones too) would “dare not speak their names” (Catamite, Sodomite, homosexual, pug ugly, suck-head, your call.) How quaint.

Two years and two places do make a different no Bette Davis eyes in the hills and hollows but Jack-induced Merrimack adventures of boys seeking pleasures in riverside woods and hamming it up for all the world to see. If only the old man could have written out his dreams, if he could have written out anything. Jack to the library born to take his fill of whatever classics that river textile town had to offer and whiskey you’re the devil which should have given even a blinded son something to think about with dear Jack fifty years dead and the old man still trembling in his teeth. My God.

But he never made, he the old man never made New York ever as far as I could tell, knew none but obvious landmarks like tall Empire State Building or Lady Liberty. Mother Jacked on some Cape Cod Canal cutaway small steamer to the Big Apple (not Big Apple then but who knows) and Automats, evoking Laura’s Edward Hopper sad-assed dreams of a guy who couldn’t even draw smiling faces and hence the queen of 20^th century angst and alienation and five cent ferry rides to Staten Island. The Village, okay for me to call it Village as I was a denizen once for Jack too might as well have been on some planet’s moon for all she knew-him too, too rich for his blood but Jack’s meat, no problem. Even if strangely Times Square hipsters, grifters, drifters and Howard Johnson hot dog eaters were mixed into the new wave, then new wave against Big Band Duke, Artie, Lionel jazz boys coming up with their sullen lipped riffs to spring a new alienated be-bop on the square world. Jack knew square, knew father square, knew mother, Mere, square in large letters of unrequited love but shook it off long enough to cross the great desert America giving Lady Liberty the boot, the un-shod sole, or maybe taking a cue from Jack book lamming it out on Bear Mountain just for the hell of it. But this old mother, not Mere mother, never knew, never had an idea of even in her big Catholic, Irish Catholic dream of meeting the boy next door and finding steady white-collar civil servant heaven. Jesus is that what she was about when the deal went down and Jack split for Ohio with two bucks and six bologna sandwiches stale well before Toledo believe me I know.             

Life took a different tact though she never found that clever test-worthy boy next door (he was some greaser with a big hog of a bike which would have inflamed Dean, would have gotten his wanting habits on and maybe a run to the Coast). So she having had her fill of Coney Island dreams and Automat five cent pies took a chance on the Sheik (strange on looking at Jack photographs how sheik-like our boy was and father too like some lost tribe members) found guarding the country’s defense not far from her home but he of Pacific wars, many with manly Marines. Jack flopped the Navy but did dangerous merchant marine runs out in the North Atlantic, out to the Murmansk seas (that makes three China and Japan alongside) not honored even in Washington until much later down in front of Arlington National bravos resting places. And a not so funny twist of sagging fate brought her dish loads of kids and some undefined alienation from which she was excluded, and he too by association. They didn’t prosper far from it but they also didn’t have that run, no, those runs, to the West looking for lost fathers, looking for the Adonis of the West to shake up his love. Could two worlds be any more different and only about say forty miles apart. That not a question but maybe a quiet condemnation for some woe-begotten life of quiet desperation, her mantra for all the good it did her.

It would take a son, some son, some great girth of sons and daughters to jailbreak, to Jack their ways out of that parent, remember their parents’ contemporary, that snare set for those who didn’t get to Times Square, didn’t get to the Village but stuck it out in Hoboken, Elko, Oceanside. It would take some unsettled sense that all was not right with the world, that too many kids were stuck with Modesto hot-rod dreams, Hell’s Angels angers, Louisville thwarts, and many La Jolla searches for perfect waves to jumpstart what Jack, and not just Jack but he is fifty tears, fifty years gone. Oh, what might have been. 

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