W.S.B.

He occupied a ramshackle place

on the east side of town

with an entourage of cats, an arsenal of guns,

a carousel of 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 drank 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?"

"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 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 insects over

countless young male bodies.

The band lurched into a new song

as a curiosity stirred in my groin,

crept up my spine,

rendering me speechless:

Is this old queen expecting a come-on?!

I hoped to impress the Godfather of the Beats

with tales of imagined literary exploits,

at least praise the dangerous permission

his work gave me

to resist 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