American Dream
Kenneth Trimble
I had come to America to look for ghosts,
First stop: Isadora Duncan Lane,
Downtown, San Francisco, a stroll from the
Tenderloin poet looking for William Taylor Jr.
I hopped on a bus for Haight-Ashbury
Where dead hippies looked frozen
Reading poetry at the Sacred Grounds Café
With nervous, agitated energy, driving home
Poetic points on rooming house life, a la carte Bukowski;
I was looking for cocks on legs haunting
North Beach,
Café Trieste, coffee beans, sad smells of
Jack Hirschman raging at the machine,
I wanted to drink the whole night of
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Burroughs, Snyder,
Lou Welsch, Di Prima and Anne Waldman
And a million other dead poets of
American literature.
Kenneth Trimble
I had come to America to look for ghosts,
First stop: Isadora Duncan Lane,
Downtown, San Francisco, a stroll from the
Tenderloin poet looking for William Taylor Jr.
I hopped on a bus for Haight-Ashbury
Where dead hippies looked frozen
Reading poetry at the Sacred Grounds Café
With nervous, agitated energy, driving home
Poetic points on rooming house life, a la carte Bukowski;
I was looking for cocks on legs haunting
North Beach,
Café Trieste, coffee beans, sad smells of
Jack Hirschman raging at the machine,
I wanted to drink the whole night of
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Burroughs, Snyder,
Lou Welsch, Di Prima and Anne Waldman
And a million other dead poets of
American literature.