Where I Live.
On November 14th, a new guy moved into the half-way house I pay almost $500 to live next to in San Diego. He owns one pair of black jeans and a shirt that says “West Virgina” that he might have gotten on a trip to that state’s visitor’s center in a previous life. Judging by his looks, heroin or crystal meth played a big role in one or more of those previous lives. He seems to have never washed his hair in his entire life.
As a neighbor, he is better than the woman who shrieked like a metronome for an hour straight so loudly that it penetrated both her closed window as well as my closed window. He is worse than the Disfigured Bluesman who plays guitar and smokes about a carton of cigarettes a day. He’s less caustic than the Filipino woman who stood in the backyard screaming, “You don’t know me! I call police!” He’s more interesting than the two young brunettes who are wasting the best years of their lives sitting around plastic lawn furniture smoking and wondering out loud if the men they know are attracted to women who are more attractive than them.
This new guy is preoccupied with reciting what sounds like beat poetry to himself. His mumbles waft up over the fence into my 2nd floor San Diego bedroom. Danny nicknamed him Allen Ginsberg ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg ).
At first, I assumed he recited songs and stream of consciousness rambling from memory. But then, after he made reference to the same West Virgina shirt that he was wearing at that very moment, I realized that he synthesized his ramblings on the fly.
This morning around 7:45 AM when I heard Allen’s voice, I assumed he and Bluesman were talking in the backyard. When Bluesman began violently coughing (as he does daily from ~7:20 to Noon as he finishes his first pack of cigarettes), Allen just kept on speaking callously, without any regard or acknowledgment of Bluesman’s violent coughs.
Thinking it was odd that Allen seemed totally unconcerned that Bluesman might be coughing up pieces of lung, I sat up on my mattress to look out my window to find out why. That’s when I realized the two weren’t speaking to one another at all. Bluesman was groaning and mumbling incoherently to himself, and Allen was across the porch, sitting in a corner, having a completely independent conversation with himself.
This is a rough transcript of the poetry (?) Allen Ginsberg was spontaneously generating. His vocabulary and pre-occupations skew toward the turbulent political climate of the 60s as well as religion. Ellipses were used when I couldn’t type fast enough. I had to cut out a lot so I could type the key words, but the general tone remains accurate.
Napalm on the shore
by “Allen Ginsberg”I love the smell of napalm on the shore
and the little guy in the rowboat
…dead sea
and the great sin of Jesus Christ
and Janis Joplin
and get onto the Rolling Stones
I’m waving my finger at Janis
so do not lose heart
…
Charlies Angels are a lot more important to me than Queen’s Things or Denmark
they call the king of the jews.
The seahawk not the gray bear
…
I brought the promise, the ceremony of Woodstock revivalmy mojo rises to resurrect Jesus Christ
…my name is Janis Joplin
I’m amazed of Charlie Daniels country[Singing the next two lines]
Janis Joplin is looking to me
Like the child of Mars’s ugly sea…
Of course, I’m the king of the Jewshe sways her way,
they cross and cross and cross
oh it’s a child?
I probably should be nervous.In a West Virginia t shirt
The veterans of the red sun of japanJerry Garcia sees Japan
a hiroshima nagasaki
and the napalm bombs of hiroshima
…That was pluto’s name calling
…I wanted it no secret that this was going on in commerce
Bob Marley’s wife
Marijuana cigarette
Coffee thrown Woodstock
I’m the bird king of Del Mar
The rusty wheel
Check the wheel!
It seems as if the poetry bug has caught on. The Filipino woman who threatened to call the police on everyone is reciting a copy of a poem she wrote to Bluesman as I write this.
This is where I live.
Out popped a dozen people in dark windbreakers identifying them as feds -- agents from Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some raced to the loading docks. Others hurried through the front door. All were armed.
