FERLINGHETTI SPAGETTI

Ferlinghetti Spagetti

I like spagetti with my Ferlinghetti -- You bet,
I'm a pasta poet -- (Don't I show it --?)
Although I've been laying off the
sauce lately.

Three cheers for the gay sonneteer, Billy
Shakespeare done come and gone,
and I too would sing a song of myself
if I could remember the lyrics.

Picture this, we've got enlargements of the
Gone World in our pockets,
to feast your hollow sockets on --
We all go blind in time,
and city lights don't shine as bright
anymore.

I know,
I know,
I know,
A ride is hard to find even in the Coney Island
of the mind when you're blind -- Don't
ever yell fire in a crowded poem --
Trust me, it's been done -- It will only
send people fleeing for the exits, which,
as Sartre already told you,
there are none.

Old Larry Ferlinghetti, blind as a bat, wearing
dark glasses and a ruptured old hat,
begging on the street, with a tin cup in
his lap -- Brother can you spare a
rhyme --?

Get back Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg,
Billy Burroughs (So glad to see you
dressed for lunch) -- We're all in
trouble now -- "You know, I'm beat,"
he says -- "Man, I am."

And this beat Homer, looking as snappy as
ever, sunnyside up, heads for home,
feeling his way along Braille street with
his bare feet, tapping his cane along
the emptiness ahead of him.