Ordinary life –
a Gregory Corso connection
- I thought I saw Eric at a rest stop
on the New York State Thruway that same day my son had his surgery
it might have been him for all I know
I never saw him lifeless -
believe in his death
like my mother believes in the Saints
he wasn’t my best friend
hell
had hardly known him long
just a guy that roomed with my high school buddy near the South Campus
of a college I didn’t go to –
we used to listen to Dylan bootlegs,
drink the next-up-from-cheapest beer
(probably something Canadian)
all winter
and wonder
why we rarely got laid
wasn’t that much to my life
not my wife giving birth
not my boy in the back seat still loopy from the anesthesia
not a great teacher who made me a poet or a bum
but when you travel cross-country with a guy,
