my humble ode to Allen

I used to live in Pittsburgh and one night Allen Ginsberg was giving a free poetry reading at Carnegie Mellon University just down the street. I think he had a cousin who was on faculty there.

I’d been reading, and was enthralled by, the Jack Kerouac books at that time, so I thought I’d better go. Just before I left, NBC Nightly News reported the sad and puzzling fact that Kurt Cobain had killed himself that day.

Ginsberg was ill at the time but he didn’t show it. He would die of liver cancer three years later, almost to the day.

He recited his poetry in a medium size classroom to maybe 30 or 40 people. Accompanying himself with a small bongo drum for about an hour, and then it was over.

Who spends an hour with Allen Ginsberg reciting his poems, without walking away infused (mused) and inspired to do the same?

After I wandered home I tapped a poem out on my computer. (I guess it’s a poem — it’s Ginsberg inspired). A couple of years later I made a website and put it and other writings up on the blossoming www. Occasionally someone would write and say that they liked it. Once, an English teacher asked to use it in his high school class.

My humble ode to Allen (and Kurt):

Allen Ginsberg and The Pittsburgh Night

23:59–8 April, 1994

This night, springtime and Friday. First out from the winter snows. Lively, frisky and sweet-smelling.

This night with Pittsburgh lights shining dotted and shimmering on the hillsides.

Allen Ginsberg comes to town.
He shines. He sings his poetry.
An old man — but young, young, young.
Young with wonder. Young with joy. Young with love for life.
Sixty-some years young and still shining.

Today, in Seattle, Kurt Cobain finishes. Finally. His blinding nuclear flash of life.

And tonight Allen Ginsberg dreams aloud his dead friends.

His dead, shining, fiery-meteor-life-friends.
His too-brief Jack Kerouac. His Neal Cassady.

Allen Ginsberg’s candle still burns. Allen Ginsberg and his old man poetry.
Old-man-full-of-wonder-about-death. The next step.
Natural curiosity for the man of 69.

Allen Ginsberg plays Pittsburgh.

And Kurt Cobain reaches fission.

I just can’t sleep.

Oh . . .
nevermind.