I don’t want to hang out
I don’t want to talk
not about poetry
literature
or anything.
I just want to know that you’re okay.
I know you’ve been dead now
for like 28 years or something
but I just like to know that’s it’s ok.
I read your books
over and over
in chronological order
so I feel like I’ve spent years
with an old friend
first your novels
then your poetry
then your shorts
then the letters
then all the bootleg shit
then I start again.
I don’t worship you, fucker.
I just think of you as an old friend.
I get drunk with you.
I mourn with you.
you don’t know me and that’s fine.
you probably wouldn’t like me,
if you did,
you wouldn’t tell me.
I miss Jane too.
I’m grateful for Linda Lee too.
I’m mad as hell as Linda King sometimes and other times, not.
I don’t want to be the next you
I’m the first me.
always have been.
if I ever met you,
at your place,
I would bring beer and wine
and not ask you a thing.
just sit there quietly drinking with you.
after a couple hours,
I’m sure I’d get bored with your old ass and leave.
I just miss you
I cry every time one of your books end
because I know you never wrote that last one
and I know I’m that much closer to saying goodbye.
but I know I’ll just start again
reading you from the beginning
going through your life again
moving that much closer to your death
I think my biggest problem
is that I do try
I don’t try as in forcing my lines
but I do try in every other aspect.
I know how you feel about ambition,
but that’s just who I am.
hustle, get pissed off, crawl in a hole for a couple months, then get back up on the horse.
speaking of,
I’m not a huge fan of the track poems and stories.
I like when you talked about being there
but not the minutia of the betting.
I don’t understand it.
that’s all right
I’m sure I write poems that people don’t like
(this one for example)
you remind me of a close friend I had
who pulled a Hemingway
on the gun range one morning.
no orange juice though.
I sometimes see his face
when I read your work.
I know you don’t dig it, man
but I love you in a way.
you are not perfect and had many flaws.
but at least you showed them to me.
that’s all that matters.
you walked through that fire
and came out okay.
I hope I do the same.
