What It's About

Along about 1996 or 97, I had begun composing what would become the poem Homage, using the standard improv outline of first line, middle passage, punch line. At some point in this process, Chris' soon-to-be-ex wife accused the two of us of running a mutual admiration society.

And it was a fair enough, if stinging, indictment. I mean, there was, no doubt, a huge degree of mutual admiration between the two of us. We talked it out and decided, mutually, that there was much for us to admire about each other, and to hell with Kim's observation.

So what began as a poem about beautiful down-and-outers I had recently known became a poem mockingly about the dangers of mutual admiration, and in the process of creating it I stumbled across some of my favorite lines-- I can't tell you how longingly I've longed to use the line "let's stroll this scrimshaw reality down to the waterfront*," but you just don't see that kind of opportunity very often-- and what has turned out to be a universal truth between the Doc and I: when we get together we drag out of each other those qualities we so mutually admire to the degree that within 24 hours we are punch drunk from observation and laughter and shocks of recognition so strong they would kill lesser men. Where others might drown in the jargon of Chris' philosophy-speak, I can at least dog-paddle enough to keep my head above water. And if I lose him in poetic metaphor, he grapples with it until he can get it to spill its guts to him. So it is, years after he accused me of purposefully befuddling him with the poem "Visiting Berkeley," that he admits that we are, in fact, the cats with future feet, the ones who see City Lights Bookstore, the ones who see what City Lights Bookstore sees in the sand.

I read this poem the morning of my birthday, after listening to the first disc of the complete recordings of The Clash's London Calling (a gift from my wife, who doesn't like The Clash at all), and then made my way to the shower, trying to think of what the most proper response would be. After mulling such nuggets of wisdom as "Says you!" and "It'as about damned time!" I came to the conclusion that what I should most properly say is the only thing that need be said, poet to poet, philosopher to philospher, admirer to mutual admirer:

Thanks, pal.

*I did get a chance to use this line, just this past month, while Rachelle and I were visiting San Francisco, but I don't think she noticed.