At the End
At the end, Kerouac was immobilized
in a tract house in St. Pete. He drank whiskey
and watched The Galloping Gourmet on television.
In Vanity of Duluoz, he wrote about the 5,000
sneering college writing instructors and all the windows
he had written under. He died of hemorrhaging esophageal
varices, the classic drunkard’s death. His estate wasn’t
worth much. I wonder if he even remembered the reading at
the Six Gallery in
and went out for wine. When Allen Ginsberg first read “Howl.”
I remember distributing fliers outside an auditorium at
the people going in, the outsiders on the sidewalk. That’s me.
The outsider on the sidewalk. In A Civil Action there is an attorney
named cheese-man. John Travolta in Welcome Back, Kotter.
Tom Delay on Dancing with the Stars. I guess it all was
vanity, or most of it. Mel Brooks singing “Dancing in the Dark”
an octave too high. Zero Mostel in The Producers.
Nixon and the pumpkin tapes. Help Underserved
Arts Communities (HUAC)—or I’ll kill you.
Nixon crawling out of a sewer with rats
and toilet paper on him. Turds and rubbers.
I remember the Army-McCarthy hearings.
I remember J. Fred Muggs on the Today show.