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Another treasure from the "leather satchel" collection (see previous post "Me and Josey Wales: Poetry played out in real life" is dated 1998, a poem my father wrote called "Brooklyn North" (for Allen Ginsberg), whose early friendship with Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs gave birth to the Beat generation of poets and writers.
Allen Ginsberg having received his master's degree from Columbia University in New York would've known the city streets my father was hauling⏤I believe it was U.S. mail⏤through at the time. Ginsberg was an avid anti-Vietnam War activist, voice of 60s counterculture and free speech. He was overtly homesexual, some of which was written about in his most famous work, "Howl and Other Poems," first published by famed San Francisco bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Bookstore.
Brooklyn North
Brooklyn Bridge
Naval Yard Metropolitan Ave. You are foreign but I love you. Only way a Reb could ever love a Yank. Ramblin' thru yer alleys and mean streets. Picking up yer backbeats. So much wonder waiting to be recovered. Hit Flatbush and 3rd. Orange hair Abundant. How does anyone sleep HERE? I do - peacefully. Ghost of Henry Miller 'bout 'hundred six, Streisand Lou Reed. Neil Diamond, TONS. Ragged steel-fallen souls. No room for grassy knolls. Assassination perhaps. Grabbed train to Coney. We are multi-colored Mostly looney. Where do we go? Verrazano looms. Kosiusko (sic) Tombs. We must begin to breathe AGAIN. I love yer stinking streets yer telephones once removed. Yer blacks browns yellows and whites and blues. Yer traffic james and 3 step red lights. What's not to like. You are sweet after all. "Shut up - get in da car already - drive North!" Wanna be first to know when the book comes out?
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