@evan.fleischer 25 November 2019

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.