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.
