The "Beat" Goes On

So many chambers in my teen age soul

And in one, a demanding crow hid.

He pecked away at my conscience;

Crowing demands I obediently did.   

He often perched on my headboard,

Usually late and on school nights…

Encouraging me to be truant,

Head to Frisco, and City Lights.

People hated the nickname “Frisco”,

Yet back in sixty-eight and sixty-nine,

We were too rushed to say San Francisco;

In our prime with so little time.

City Lights always welcomed us,

Vagabond thinkers from the streets…

We hung out reading Evergreen,

All the latest, from the “Beats”.

We cried together on the sidewalk

The day we lost Jack Kerouac,

Vietnam and the neighborhood,

And the era we wouldn’t get back.

Today, a half century later,

City Lights, survives in the gentrified mix.

Lawrence, have a wonderful birthday,

You're still my lighthouse at ninety-six.