Mary Sands

        

Now That's the Spirit. You Go, Gregorio!

Going to LA today, back to Irvine, all corporate buildings. Ties. Shoe
shines. Fashion Island. Terminal preppies on the 405. Cell phone
nightmares. All going to make a buck—shopping lists and business
solutions. I see them in the elevators, see them storming the palms. This
is the life of a "prefeshunnal writer". I know. God, get me home to that
Brubeck, to that Rolling Rock, to that Take Five over the ocean. Get me
back to the Big Bridge, to Jack. I don't care I don't get paid. Get me the
fuck out of Irvine, California!

I hope people know and remember the splayed fingers of Monk,
and Jack Kerouac telling us about go roll our bones.

Remember The Street in NYC. And how it must have been to walk down it. Hear
the pings of jazz at 3 am. From those who wanted to do it just cause they
dug it and had something big to say. Strange Fruit, remember! Break the
barriers of the Main world. Remember those guys blowing and making it finally.

Brubeck said:

"You know the first black man that I saw, my dad took me to see on the
Sacramento River in California and he said to his friend, 'Open your shirt
for Dave.' There was a brand on his chest. And my dad said, 'These things
can't happen.' That's why I fought for what I fought for."

(Brubeck's tears.)

Everybody's moved by somethin'.

In this Age of Stuff (a saying I heard the other day), most folks worry
about nothing but their own Righteous Self; you do that.

I'd rather just do what I do, want to be left alone by entrepreneurs of
pettiness, help carry the sweet legacy that inspires the art and poetry and
ideas that are underrated or unknown or forgotten these days. That's what it's all about.
Staying close to what you believe (and if you believe others undermine what you do
by doing differently, just remember the world Ain't revolving around Your
grand ideas of Self).

Like Gregory Corso said at the end of his poem "Poet Talking to Himself in
the Mirror":

"Ain't got no agent
can't see poets having agents
Yet Ginsy, Ferl have one
and make lots of money by them
and fame too
Maybe I should get an agent?
   Wow!
No way, Gregory, stay
      close to the poem!!!"

Now, that's the spirit. You go, Gregorio!

© by Mary Sands