When I die
if I could go
to Bohemian Heaven
I would sit here
in early Northamerican October
at the table by the Door to The Canals
in
The Sundance Cafe
in Jack Kerouac's Lowell.
I'd be listenin' to
the Sacred BeBops wailin'
I'd be leavin' Soho and Greenwich Village
cause I can hear the Canals are rumbling,
I'd be workin' on that
sweet unsafe sex by saxophone,
sippin' on
this Howlin' Wolf
Four-Bar Blues Harp growl.
It's all runnin' inside
th' skull
of this nice Piglet-from-Ohio
who, surprisingly, always says
hi
and he goes tappin' on th backbeat
with click-clack bootheels
and I myself
am StreetSlash writing
to this dazzling Interstate satisfaction
of knowing that
as I sip
that Ken Kawaji
from Cincinnati-by-th-River, Ohio,
who runs the Visions-along-the-Riverbanks
Poetry-and-Prose Insurrection Center,
and who shepards
the Sacred Scribbled Glimpse
thru the pasture fields
of
nighttime and take-ahold-of-yr-own-life
desirings,
that Ken himself
who I just met
this Jack Kerouac Eternal October
afternoon
inside th' Blood-an-bones
textile mills of Lowell, USA,
this Ken Kawaji who
must take Gregory Corso homeward
to New York City
before
steering his Starfire
1965 Oldsmobile convertible
back down th' Open Highway, rollin' on
toward
Riverside Route Seven,
brushin' by th' Delta Sternwheeler Queen,
and turnin' up
th' Cincinnati Slide Guitar of Lonnie Mack,
that this Ken Kawaji
is settled in
to Hot Canal Coffee-and-Cream
and a back-beat shuffle,
he's reading SQUAWK Magazine--he's
somewhere between
Squeals-from-th-Basement
and The
Tail-Curling Adventures of Ravenous Piglet
and he's smiling, yes,
he's chuckling out loud. What? Could it be?
Does Ken
like Ravenous Piglet?
Will he give Ravenous a ride
to Cincinnati, Ohio?
Ah, sweet October not-yet-falling leaves
Improv Blues Bard Breaths,
if I could go
to Bohemian Heaven
right here tonight at midnight
I wouldn't change
a thing
that's happened among us today,
or move a single hair
on our wild, wooly, rebel heads.
If I could go to Bohemian Heaven.
If I could go to Bohemian Heaven.