Colorado
Naropa—1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998
Naropa—1996
I missed you and now miss you. I mean, not now, because you are here. (I just touched you.)
Of course you did. After all I’m newly 40. 15 years since pilgrimage to show Ginsberg four poems. July 4th picnic, him making graphite pizza from all my drivel. “Too many words! Too many words!”
He was always really kind to me, generous to Boog. That first summer I interviewed him for my master’s thesis and when we were done I asked Allen if Boog could use his American sentence poem—“I can still see Neal’s 23-year-old corpse when I cum in my hand”—for the cover of our new zine, ManAlive! And he was giving me a photocopy of it, and I said, “Any chance you could handwrite it for us?” And he grabbed a pen and went right to it.
He wanted to grab my pen too but I didn’t let ’im. (Ba-bing!) Brought me out for drinks. Best glass of wine I ever tasted but didn’t catch its title ’cause there I was in Boulder w/the Gins, Anne Waldman, Anselm Hollo, Andrew Schelling, Will Alexander. “I gotta get back to my buddies in Denver,” I said when I got too glassy. “You can stay w/me,” he said. “I know I can,” I said.
My first trip to Denver with Guy and Miriam, that first Naropa summer, I bought a baseball bat keychain with the logo of the incoming expansion baseball team the Colorado Rockies. 19 years, three lost in a couch in my parents’ house, and it’s still my keychain today.
That same trip, eating in Arby’s, John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” comes on loudly clear. Perhaps the best three minutes of that entire summer.
Florida
In high school, I was a scholarship kid at my Jewish day school.
Public schools would schedule senior trips for a day at Great Adventure.
We skedded ours for four days at Disney World.
Broke, my family was told they only had to pay $50.
“We’re doing worse than we planned,” said Michael—
Ponch of our gang. 3-man gig
at City of West Palm Beach birthday celebration.
Are cities born? Are they drowned? We were poor pirate
show needing dosh. “First the balloon animals, are free,”
he told me on the midriff parkway. “Draw the crowd. Then
suggested donation—1 buck. Then they COST a buck.”
“Step up,” I said, “Balloons.”
First time I went to Florida was July 1977,
and a blackout hit New York City.
My mother kept calling my brother and sister
even though we now lived in Long Island.
Little lizards up the hotel wall. Balloons
were okay cash but still we’re skint. Two boys
approached as I folded dog after dog, sword after sword.
“Hey,” said one, “Can you make me a balloon dick with balls and pubes?”
“No,” I said, “I can make you a dog or a sword.”
“How ’bout a balloon dog with balls and pubes,” said the other.
I said, “How about a balloon dog with balls, pubes, and a sword.”
Illinois
Evanston I may have had the best sex in you.
Chicago too. Every radio in town lit up, every
Chevy horn sounded. The ladies in Seurat’s
Le Grande Jatte clapped their palms over
their bonnets. I thought my bonnie lay over
the ocean but it was only a lake.
I’ve never seen it in person,
but I’m told they dye Lake Michigan
green for St. Patty’s Day.
Mayor Daley mailed a cease
and desist order to our hotel.
All we did was yell. Hoards
of leprechaun helmets poured
down North St. Clair. An envious
river feeding past the shore.
Shit. There’s just so much to tell
you, dear. Namely: I’m still there.
I made two trips to Chicago
in first kinda post-college job.
First to do daily reportage at Consumer Electronics show
alongside Roman and the almost third They Might Be Giants.
After wrapping up one night
we went to Pizzeria Due,
the second ever Pizza Uno,
housed in a huge Victorian.
They made you order your pizza before you sat.
At our table I simultaneously ordered a Sam Adams
and a cup of coffee,
pouring the beer into my coffee a little at a time.
I’m still here in Evanston and Chicago—
a pane of glass hovering over hotel stairs.
Every window will one day be a cup’s worth
of liquid. Just wait. Tower fountain. Finally
another melted glacier by the radio station.
I called the Chicago White Sox front office.
“Some editors are coming in from New York City,
and we wanted to get them a pair of tickets.”
A few days later we were in Chicago
at what would soon be Old Comiskey Park.
The seats were maybe eight rows up from home plate,
behind the screen.
Perhaps the best seats I’ve ever had.
During batting practice a foul
ball came right back off the bat,
just missing the screen,
hit off a 40-something-year-old woman,
just below her breasts,
and into a late-teen-early-20s guy’s hands.
As he jumped up and down,
she yelled out to all of us,
“That’s my ball, I had it,”
then pulled up her shirt to reveal the imprint of a baseball,
stitches and all.
David A. Kirschenbaum is the author of The July Project 2007 (Open 24 Hours), a series of songs about Star Wars set to rock and pop classics. His work has appeared where is forthcoming in Brooklyn Rail, the Brooklyn Review Online, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Chain, Hanging Loose Magazine, Pine Hills Review, and The Village Voice, among others. He is the editor and publisher of Boog City, a New York City-based small press and electronic newspaper now in its 33rd year. He is the director of the biannual Welcome to Boog City Arts Festivals, entering their 18th year this September.
Sean Cole is the author of After These Messages (Lunar Chandelier Press), The December Project (Boog Literature), and several chapbooks including Itty City (Pressed Wafer). His poems have also appeared in the journals Hanging Loose, Brooklyn Rail, ArtFuse, Court Green, Black Clock, Boog City, and elsewhere. For almost thirty years, he’s been a reporter, producer, and occasional guest host of various public radio programs and podcasts, including more than a decade at This American Life.
Image: irishcentral.com
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