W.S.B.

He occupied a ramshackle place

on the east side of town

with an entourage of cats, an arsenal of guns,

revolving celebrity guests.

Rumor circulated 'round the English Department

that he frequented The Bottleneck bar.

One November afternoon, I spotted him there,

crouched alone in a corner, pressed herringbone suit,

hickory-sword cane tap-tap-tapping to the music.

Our bartender whispered that he took tequila,

so I purchased two shots and approached.

"Pardon me, Mr. Burroughs.

I am just a B-I-G admirer

of your writing ...

May I offer you a tequila, Sir?"

"Why, certainly, young man."

We tossed back our shots.

I retrieved the glasses, and he eyeballed me

with his steely, cobalt eyes.

I fell into a trance waiting for him to blink:

These are the eyes that starred down

the barrel of a revolver

pointed at his wife's cranium (pow!),

eyes that peered unflinchingly

into a drug-crazed abyss,

eyes that crawled like an insect over

countless young male bodies.

The band lurched into a new song

and a curiosity sparked in my groin,

rocketed up my spine and burst into a dull haze

that rendered me speechless:

Is this old queen expecting a come-on?!

I'd have liked to impress the Godfather of the Beats

with tales of imagined literary exploits,

or regale him with a deliciously irreverent anecdote,

at least praise his influence on a moral code

skeptical of monotonous conformity.

Instead, I stood before the man an imbecile,

barely mustering an oafish smile,

which he met—bless him—with a kindly grin

that pierced my anxious fever.

I retreated to the bar.

"How did it go?" the bartender asked.

"Oh, brilliant ... Yeah ...

One for the memoires."

And some say it was William Burroughs,

not Thomas Lambert,

who brought the literary bona fides

to Lawrence, Kansas.

**First published in Fjords Review

On Dropping Out of College

Bukowski and I are trading punches again.
He claims I jab like a schoolgirl.

"See Boccaccio," he tells me.  "See Jeffers,
Fante, Céline . . . and get a job, kid."

Anaïs Nin telegrams from Paris.
She's had it with Henry and his whores.

"He's just a child," she writes, "and so are you."
It is a delicate affair with her.

I've been shooting William Burroughs into the vein

like a shameless junky.

His hipster cynicism floods the bloodstream

with antipathy for Freud's theories on

psychosexual development:  The Ego And The Id,

The Interpretation Of Dreams.

I have recorded my dreams in which
Hemingway is a frequent visitor.

He insists I keep my elbows down and in
else that scoundrel, Dostoyevsky,

will sucker-punch me in the groin.
I have looked forward to meeting Nietzsche

and Rimbaud, but semester is beginning
and I am required to spend much time

with Wordsworth, Melville and Descartes,
the very same sons of bitches

Mark Twain cautioned not to let interfere
with my education.


**First published in Di-Verse-City anthology