a birthday poem

100 years of Lawrence Ferlinghetti is one of those unexpected gifts
like discovering a restaurant where you can still get a whole meal for $5
in a neighborhood where landlords burn buildings down left & right
so they can sell it all off and watch emerge in its glorious place
like Stanley Kubrick’s obelisk
an object that has the size of a building but the heart of a phone. It’s like …
(Snap the fingers and observe the landscape.)
It’s like we’re watching Auden’s candle trying to conquer the darkness
and then … silence, because the brave creature was giving a wad of money; someone heard that no one had built a luxury apartment in the last five
minutes and what better place to conquer with a shining box of parked
anonymous money than the sound of a lone frog somewhere in the darkness?
But Lawrence Ferlinghetti is still here, and, even if he leaves, even if
he picks up Auden’s flame & takes it upstairs to his paintings to workshop,
re-write, and let loose amongst a land of color, no one will ever know.
I’m convinced of that. 100 years of Ferlinghetti. God bless you.
And, are you hungry? There’s a place around the corner. We should go.