my freeway novel poem
Posted: April 30th, 2011, 10:08 pm
born in a dump
of freeways and shopping centers
there was a railroad track behind
the tracked house on the skull de sack
I grew up in
and a small farm behind that, they grew
cabbage, was I born on a cabbage leaf?
No, this was California, I was born in
the mid west, but it felt like I was born
in a dump of freeways and filling stations
by the time I could think about it
the orange groves were cut down
as a kid in grade school I was a rebel
because drew the wrong pictures
I did not draw what the other kids did
My dad worked in an aircraft factory
we took weekend trips out to the desert
and the mountains
otherwise I walked to the corner liquor store
to buy penny candy, the movie theater in the next
town over cost 25 cents on the Saturday Matinee
being a kid in the fifties watching black and white TV
and playing cowboys and Indians, or army guys or
playing marbles in the street, I remember duck and
cover drills, put your head between your legs and kiss
your ass goodbye, I grew up five miles from Disneyland
mickey mouse tomorrow-land, opened when I was five
Kennedy was shot at twelve and by 13 I was a Beatnik
Beatles made the world happy again, and they were
making war in southeast Asia, In 67 I dropped LSD
The first person that I met that had taken acid was a
beautiful long legged girl, she told me stories of acid
parties in Hollywood hills, I was in a car on the freeway
going to Sunset Blvd one day, three girls were along
for the ride, they had taken some purple cap, the first
ones that I had ever seen tripping on a psychedelic
one of the girls became a famous B actress in Hollywood
she was in a movie called Hollywood Boulevard and
Candy Stripe Nurses, 70's soft porn, her name was Candy
I knew Candy that night in 67, she and her two sexy girl
friends walked around Sunset, high of LSD laughing and
singing light my fire, Candy was so sweet and she shined
in the magic light of those innocent times a changing
I can still see one girl looking at the checkerboard squares
of tiles at her feet near Pandora's Box a teenage night club
She was watching the squares move around, she was on a trip
I took acid a few short months later with a friend, we listened
to Donovan, and Leonard Cohen, and took a ride on the freeway
in his older brothers little MG sports car, we laughed at the lights
as they passed over our heads zooming down the freeway to now
I was not yet a poet, but I was a Dylan lyric lover and I always
thought about "the language that he used" so one day I would
find that language in my own voice, and Howl in my own heart
All the best poetry of the minds of the Beats tripping into mine
and I would not bend over and put my head between my legs
and kiss my little kid ass goodbye, I would put my words between
my mind's eye and mind bend them onto the paper like drawings
I once did that were not like the other kids, a poet must be different
They wanted to draft me, and I was reading Alan Watts and Burroughs
my view out of the apartment window my dad rented was of a freeway
many years later I wrote a novel called, 'Gone Hallucinogen Freeway'
the novel is a poem within a novel within a poem, this is my novel poem
of freeways and shopping centers
there was a railroad track behind
the tracked house on the skull de sack
I grew up in
and a small farm behind that, they grew
cabbage, was I born on a cabbage leaf?
No, this was California, I was born in
the mid west, but it felt like I was born
in a dump of freeways and filling stations
by the time I could think about it
the orange groves were cut down
as a kid in grade school I was a rebel
because drew the wrong pictures
I did not draw what the other kids did
My dad worked in an aircraft factory
we took weekend trips out to the desert
and the mountains
otherwise I walked to the corner liquor store
to buy penny candy, the movie theater in the next
town over cost 25 cents on the Saturday Matinee
being a kid in the fifties watching black and white TV
and playing cowboys and Indians, or army guys or
playing marbles in the street, I remember duck and
cover drills, put your head between your legs and kiss
your ass goodbye, I grew up five miles from Disneyland
mickey mouse tomorrow-land, opened when I was five
Kennedy was shot at twelve and by 13 I was a Beatnik
Beatles made the world happy again, and they were
making war in southeast Asia, In 67 I dropped LSD
The first person that I met that had taken acid was a
beautiful long legged girl, she told me stories of acid
parties in Hollywood hills, I was in a car on the freeway
going to Sunset Blvd one day, three girls were along
for the ride, they had taken some purple cap, the first
ones that I had ever seen tripping on a psychedelic
one of the girls became a famous B actress in Hollywood
she was in a movie called Hollywood Boulevard and
Candy Stripe Nurses, 70's soft porn, her name was Candy
I knew Candy that night in 67, she and her two sexy girl
friends walked around Sunset, high of LSD laughing and
singing light my fire, Candy was so sweet and she shined
in the magic light of those innocent times a changing
I can still see one girl looking at the checkerboard squares
of tiles at her feet near Pandora's Box a teenage night club
She was watching the squares move around, she was on a trip
I took acid a few short months later with a friend, we listened
to Donovan, and Leonard Cohen, and took a ride on the freeway
in his older brothers little MG sports car, we laughed at the lights
as they passed over our heads zooming down the freeway to now
I was not yet a poet, but I was a Dylan lyric lover and I always
thought about "the language that he used" so one day I would
find that language in my own voice, and Howl in my own heart
All the best poetry of the minds of the Beats tripping into mine
and I would not bend over and put my head between my legs
and kiss my little kid ass goodbye, I would put my words between
my mind's eye and mind bend them onto the paper like drawings
I once did that were not like the other kids, a poet must be different
They wanted to draft me, and I was reading Alan Watts and Burroughs
my view out of the apartment window my dad rented was of a freeway
many years later I wrote a novel called, 'Gone Hallucinogen Freeway'
the novel is a poem within a novel within a poem, this is my novel poem
