Jowl By Curtis Blazemore

 

I’ve seen the feeblest minds of my generation get in

the best MFA programs in the U.S. of A. I read the

finest minds pseudonymously blogging about

difficult ways to be naked in the dark. The motel in

Barstow was called The Half-Sack Motor Palace

and it was hard to know if this was fate or just gassy

bloat, or maybe it was a secret hot-tub hideout for

defrocked priests and remedial orphans… either way

I had to piss, write a poem about pissing, and nap,

so I checked in. Ginsberg was there, sitting on the bed

in my room. He puffed his hash pipe silently. I pulled

us a couple of beers from my bag and used the john,

then we split the beers and the rest of his Lebanese

Blonde space cake while comparing hungers and highs,

and Lo and Behold! We agreed that everyone is either

strange or familiar. We agreed the ex-Prez tweets like

a mean girl. We agreed this thing called the real world

is a bizarre place where pissed-off creatures say things

aimed at your face. Sunlight spilling in the window

made the smoky room iridescent. I remembered I’d

forgotten to write my poem about pissing, and heard

Buk calling me a lazy old excuse for a poet through

the floorboard. “Ginsberg,” I whispered through the

sunlit haze, “my poems got kicked off the joyride,

they’re just a rest stop headache with an occasional

glory hole— I lie in the dark naked and black out

and none of my angels come, not a one.” He looked

thoughtful for a few beats, then aimed words right at

my face. “Sounds to me like you’re fucked,” he said,

but I’ve got Kerouac’s carcass in my car trunk… I’ll

drag that in, leave him with you, so you can take him

on the road, see if that helps.” Ginsberg ambled out the

door. Like a sap I sat and waited until the sun went

down. My poetry chops were jowls. I had to piss beer.

Curtis Blazemore has been on the planet far too long, publishing various works in between having bad luck and making people rethink their faith in humanity. No matter. He sees sentences in the exhaled smoke and scribbles furiously. He hopes someday to be able to afford a Greyhound bus ticket to Graceland.