a small answer to a large question

a small answer to a large question Where we attack the negro streets Ginsburg roared at dawn spiraling soul fest of ego fed visions Carl says now the whole thing a farce nonsensical transmissions of scriptures torn bloodied virgin youth wrought from their grasp all this Carl says now of Ginsburg and negro streets at dawn. ........ Rastaman picks up where Jack & Neal left off absolute lovers renaissance men all roaming and grooving on hashish in stolen cars and rastafari speaks eloquently of Ja love roaming universe with remains of Jack and Neal buried none too quietly Ja love calls to them out of nights spent with naked boys and eager love finds a home in this era of “post beat” yes, rastafari with dreadlocks and ganja still hold out for a magical note from Neal’s hammer arcing in his pattern of beat to Jack’s oft times erratic prose and Allen giving up the ghost of negro streets wanders quietly in the confines of his Colorado retreat the message returned from love soured with Gregory on a tepid summer night. ........ Visions of Milarepa of Kabir float lightly on the air of the hashish scarab Richard Krech’s almost forgotten litany of the after beat era 60’s and Basho silent so many years returns in our mind (unconscious, mind you) through the vessel of zeitgeist Burroughs did in his wife by an accident with tampered visions of Mescalito naked in bed with boys of Jack and Allen’s dreams he retreats to his fortress in San Fran to his guns and his penchant for pederasty tall, thin gaunt from the satoris found in other lands reminiscing i suppose of days lost to a time lost and the irrecoverable testimony of what Naked Lunch did to a generation of post adolescents lost in the way of love perhaps not devotion too bad for those experienced in satori soon the answer appears that transcendence is illuminating no doubt but transient as well ....... 1986 post beat? neo beat? illuminations from hippies and free love LSD and college revolution become misplaced to the romanticism neo-romanticism of beat days love for that which rastafari now call Ja christian heretics called Father, Son & Holy Ghost primitive peoples (some of them) called it Gilgamesh but the Beats the romantics of our own longed for satoris called it by no name at all except perhaps Life which seems to sum it up quite well on Ginsburg’s negro streets at dawn. - April 1986 Boles’ poem serenades long gone Beat figures. It was writ- ten in 1986, long after the demise of the Beat era, but still relative to the post-Beat generation. The years have passed, but the poem has not lost anything in its visionary appeal. When I read the poem, I thought of my friend, the late Jack Micheline, and I pictured him reading it at a po- etry reading. It’s a poem that works well on the written page, but I feel it would be stronger still if read out loud. I like clarity in poetry, so that a reader doesn’t have to struggle with strained syntax or inventive grammar. Boles’ poem does not disappoint. This is the kind of book to read over a cup of coffee and leaves you with the feeling you are being given permission to enter the landscape he has drawn. Boles’ range is impressive, with a large capacity of genu- ine feeling. There is no pretension here. The poem speaks with an authentic vision, all to often lacking in today’s po- etry world. The strength prevails throughout the poem as if the reader was sitting across the table from the poet en- gaged in a lively conversation. a.d. winans / 03-17-2011 $5.95