Seattle (cont'd)

Do it or not.
No one cares.
Is you is or is you ain't
an existentialist?

I had a can of beer
with my $3 snack pack.
A summer sausage, soft cheese,
and Saltine crackers. Dried fruit, a granola bar,
and Oreo cookies. Like someone at Bayreuth,
for the Festspielhaus, or Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbes.
Luncheon on the green. Odalisques and business majors.

Looking down, I see the land
the pioneers went across
in covered wagons, to new settlements,
unknown hardships, a different life,
the plane I'm flying in cruises at
525 mph, and seats 148 passengers,
plus crew. Indians used to go on a walkabout.
I'm glad I'm not a free-lance writer, writing articles about
where to eat when you're in Minnesota. In War of the Worlds,
germs killed the aliens. Thoughts have wings, say the Rosicrucians.
Zorita consummated her relationship with a snake, preferred women
to men, managed a nightclub in Miami during the war, like Barbara Walters'
father, Lou Walters, who brought bare breasts to Miami Beach, and fathered
a celebrity broadcaster, Jackie Gleason, Sammy Davis, Jr., the Rat Pack,
Frank Sinatra. I'd rather read Nick Tosche's book Dino: Living High
in the Dirty Business of Dreams. Hortense Powdermaker lives!

I think of Jeff Bridges and them
in The Last Picture Show.
Born, died, in the service.
Lost her virginity. Got her price.
Give me a pig foot and a bottle of beer,
a private car on a passenger train,
Jimmie Rodgers singing "Blue Yodel No. 7."
The state spelling championship in the 6th grade.
I thought obeisance had two s's in it.
As Kyle said about the wet fart, "I guessed wrong."
"I gambled and lost." No guts, no glory.
Surfer Jack, the Big Kahuna. I'd rather take
geography. I wish I'd paid more attention to
the gunnery instructor. A bobble-head doll
look like R. Lee Ermey. Norman Mailer writing
Why Are We in Vietnam? Highest rank held:
buck sergeant. An enlisted man in the ranks of
American letters. Charlie Parker was a yardbird,
a buck private, policing the parade ground for cigarette butts.
You've heard about the novel with some poems in it. But what about
a long poem containing a short novel. A haphazard collection, or potpourri.
A roman-feuilleton. Compare foil, or leaf. The cookbook of the Junior League
of Bay County is called Bay Leaves. It's a machine, too, and it works,
Malcolm Lowry said, of Under the Volcano. Crop circles. Dead people.
Bigfoot.

On the whole, I'd rather be
in Philadelphia, drinking Pilsener beer
at Ludwig's and talking about beat poetry,
beat fiction, the beatnik lifestyle, hippie chicks
in net stockings, a Chianti bottle with a candle in it,
bullfight posters, pod, jazz, Zen, these are the boosters
of the Beat Generation. Cockroaches, filth, city filth,
art-house movies, laziness and male chauvinism, get a job,
get a house with a mortgage, get things advertised on teevee,
no wait, tune in, turn on, drop out, the head, the heart, and the balls,
all working in sync. I'd like to buy a vowel. I'd like to buy the world
a Coke. I'd like to buy a bag of air with some potato chips in the corner.
I'd like to buy a bill of rights, a bill of wrongs, a bill of goods.
A pig in a poke. Ten pounds of shit in a five-pound sack. A blivet.
While you're up, get me a grant. A play on words, a pun, the lowest form
of humor, lower than whale shit on the bottom of the ocean, absolute zero,
you have been bamboozled, hoodwinked, led astray, someone blew smoke
up your ass and sold you wooftickets.

I took a copy of Bukowski Never Did This
out of my backpack and started browsing in it,
as a casual reader in a bookstore might do.
It drew me in and it made me laugh.
I couldn't put it down. It cracked me up.
Jack Saunders, Panama City. This is a good sign.
Nobody reacting to my laugh lines at the book release party
shook my confidence. You can blame it on the sound system,
or audience fatigue--burn-out, after two hours of
high-intensity monkeyshines--but I'm extremely sensitive to
the charge of Alibi Ikeism. What was wrong with them, dem,
the motherfuckers what's in charge (MFWIC)? Nothing,
nowt, my bad, on me? What if it was the circumstances.

I set my copy of Bukowski Never Did This,
opened, on the empty seat between me and my seat mate,
who is reading the latest Harry Potter book (15% off
in the airport bookstore), and he saw the author photograph,
on the back, of me eating a tray of portugaises at Baytowne Wharf,
in Sandestin, and realized it was I, the maniac responsible, I was like
a shoe-bomber with an infernal machine, or IED (improvised explosive device),
in his carry-on baggage, his backpack, he asked me, "Is that you?" and I said,
"What's it to you--are you writing a book?"

We, the next of kin, that is, Susan, Virginia, and I, less Bill,
whose flight was changed, went to the funeral home to choose
an urn to deliver mother's ashes in and sign a contract for her cremation.
No service, just transportation, storage, cremation, death registration with
the Bureau of Vital Statistics, and issuance of death certificate. We chose an urn
of reclyclable paper, so she could be buried in my father's grave. Per her wishes.
All this was under $700. No pressure to buy anything. No embalming, no coffin.
I thought of John Goodman and Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, wanting to put
Steve Buscemi's ashes is a coffee can, or an oatmeal canister, or tape together
some shirt cardboards. I thought of the winos in On the Nickel liberating
Ralph Waite's ashes from the county, led by That'll Do, Pig. The father of
the nerd in Revenge of the Nerds. I used to be the nerd and now I am the father.