Everyone Dies (Goodbye Joey Ramone) Old I-Beam rock club boarded up - memory rivers
of booze and drugs poured through 1978-1985 -my band The Job played there twice w/ The Offs (lead singer O.D.’d) The Lounge Lizards (leader now sober writing movie soundtracks) -myself teaching a class on Kerouac, own poet scribbles * dot coms fold Bush backs down from China pressured by business -the computer programmer &
his wife downstairs take up smoking hacking phlegm in the morning * graffiti mural 25 YEARS OF PUNKING PUNK side of the liquor store big metallic block letters - secret language - Latino gang influence - big scary tree face BABES IN TOYLAND early 60’s Disney * Joey Ramone is dead- tall geeky punk messiah eyes perpetually shaded chanting the mantra GABBA GABBA HEY! dead of lymphoma barely older than me -Kenny went to high school with you “he always looked exactly the same” jet black long hair visionary bird garuda beak outrageous -one never knows who’s death will feel like a friend’s - at the news of yours I wept then prayed * after a free Ramones concert we jumped in a public fountain one of the happiest days of my life feverishly pogoed to I WANT TO BE SEDATED &
TEENAGE LOBOTOMY on “breeder’s night” of the gay club Stud jumped a bus through the back door after ROCK ’N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL movie - you blew up the high school - we were kicked off the bus * Phowa is Tibetan yoga transference of consciousness -shoot through the crown &
image the dead one doing
the same merging into Pure Land which is this world without veil “everything is nirvana - all sounds are mantras - all beings are buddhas” -my wife and I plan a ceremony -tonight when I beat the dream & burn incense he’ll hear the rock ‘n roll Carcass
Poet Kerouac’s scroll, the original ON THE ROAD - one long page one long road (as Ginsberg said) so Kerouac didn’t need to stop typing - previously exhibited in the De Young museum religious relic now at Christie’s auction, skin of the carcass poet big game trophy going for a million & a half - - “A lot of traffic?” I ask the receptionist “Yeah.” I wondered if any Universities had come forward yet, adding “If it gets into a private collection it'll be hard to ever see” She looks over my shoulder, disinterested - The scroll itself talks about Burroughs an early-middle section spread out both ends of the scroll in Roman proclamation clear glass rollers - whole about 4 feet long - an older man hunches over it with his friend in her 50’s, the flaming red cockatoo-do too young for her now - he has a smug smile - he blocks my view over the glass sarcophagus of the 4 ft. midget Jack - it’s the older man’s book, it’s everyone’s book just like people say “Allen” instead of “Ginsberg" (but few call him “Ginsey”) - the magic’s stolen, you can’t feel a thing in the tiny room, a Japanese man in a suit the karate security - downstairs the shaved head black security guard lets me out “‘I'm gonna go see it myself” he tells me, as I push the green button unlocking the glass door into the street Jack would have liked him “You should” I say, regretting it, University teacher in my mouth - dressed in black catching my reflection in a hearse 4/12/01
The scroll sold for 2.2 million to Jim Irsay owner of the Indianapolis Colts who
also owns one of Elvis' guitars.
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