[lit-ideas] Re: SERIOUS POEM FOR STAN
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 13:15:49 -0400
Here's another parody version of the same Ginsy poem, based
on a real encounter. - Eric
A Book Store in Manhattan
[Parody is homage gone sour. - Brendan Gill]
What little warning I had of you tonight, Allen Ginsberg,
as I walked up Broadway in headlights with a broken CD
player self-consciously admiring the new Time-Warner Building.
In my fatigue, and shopping for career skills, I went
into a chain book store, not dreaming of any chance meeting!
What caffeination and what penury! Whole condos
shopping at night! Carpets full of grad-students! Wives in
the Self Help, babies in the bestsellers!--and you, Noam
Chomsky, what were you doing in the humor section?
I saw you, Allen Ginsberg, childless, salacious old
professor, poking among magazines in the front and eyeing
the male booksellers.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who buys for the
poetry section? Where do you hold signings? Are you the
manager?
I wandered in and out of the displays of faced-out
paperbacks avoiding you, but monitored along with everyone
else, by the store surveillance system.
We skirted past each other in the thronged aisles nimble
in our pretended reading of XML and wine guides, possessing
every professional perk, but never acknowledging the
homeless spare-changer outside.
Where are you going, Allen Ginsberg? I am going the
other way. Which way do your worn Buddhist boots point tonight?
(I think of your book and Homer's Odyssey side-by-side
in the book store and feel absurd.)
Will I have to pretend to walk all night through
expensive streets?
The cabs add yellow to shade, lights out in the stores, if
I'm late again we'll both be unemployed.
Will I be able to stroll dreaming of the lost America of
the Sixties past white stretch-limos in garages, home to my
yuppie neighborhood?
Ah, dead icon, East Village celebrity, lucky old
derelict teacher, what America did you have when hipsters
began reading obituaries and you stepped from a smoke-free
bank and stood watching the ferry
disappear to the black shore of New Jersey?
Manhattan, 2003
[Eric Yost]
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
