Rob Hack
Broke busted bored and beat jizzing to the sounds of jazz,
buddying up to Buddhism, elevating existentialism
the low lifes at the Angel Bar walk a mile for a Camel
or a Vickie Russell trick. Hunched over a naked lunch
adding-machine heir William Burroughs
invents a steam powered dildo then Mexico
in a Benzedrine haze puts a bullet in her
brain runs south for a stronger fix, Tangier cos
prison’s a tomb folds you up like a poem in a book.
Ginsberg Howls down San Francisco streets in a subterranean
dawn crossing himself Kerouac rockets down Highway 66
crossing the plains in search of himself but Jack loves only
his mother and whiskey dreams of a check shirt America
with a mystical vision of death drives a Mustang like a bullet.
That a Pontiac in your pocket? Muscle-car names are horses
and Indians buried at Wounded Knee and broken hearted
not fast as a land claim or an iron horse on a Cheyenne plain
what made Milwaukee famous made a good Indian dead.
