THE LAST BOHEMIAN WIZARD
(In honor of novelist Jerry Kamstra)
by Daniel Yaryan
Ghostly visitors
Save a place at the visionary table
Where medicine does not speak
The poltergeists creak through sable dimensions
to arrive and elude hospital elements
hidden world harbingers of ingenuity peak
Joyce, raises his glass in Irish toast to Kamstra,
seeking revelry,
ushering him into a secret society
of next-world, writer travelers
Miller, with approving nod
reads tattooed impression of Tropic of Cancer aloud
Thoreau calls for the sun, pulls up the blinds…
requests Kamstra’s bed be moved to the sands of Big Sur
Nin rakes her tongue inside her cheek,
reveals pussywillow,
lifts her brow to the headband outlaw of Weed and word
Bohemian attraction
Fitzgerald, bow-tied, brings a five-piece suit,
a gift for a lifetime of generosity to all other authors
who’ve crossed the Frisco Kid’s path,
acknowledging sacrifice of creative self
Dickinson wires a cosmic poem:
Fickle food named fame
you say, a near-death experience
Farm the virgin thigh of immortality – o the ecstasy
Envelops perseverance flame
Unincinerated fascicles of literary passion await
as lullaby lions shall soon awake
Dionysian arrival on porch of eternal light
belonging to page-turning temptresses in full delight
the urn will burn and fuel all dreamers’ flights
As nirvana promotes, furthers
with sturdy heart’s bell – earning undivided reflection
wherein radiant insight dwells
seekers of pastures — clandestine leaves of language
following footsteps in the wind
Bukowski rolls around the hospital floor
Bacchus laughter box,
amused by all the discovered aphorism spells,
dancing above your bed
Concedes, “That’s right, you’ve got it, Kid – whether you want it or not.”
Hemingway picks Buk up and hands him a beer,
says there’s no fighting it,
the feeling, so true and deep
that you still feel it on the bloody floor tiles,
catching the resounding, poundings of yesteryears
and the sounding cymbals of future-comings
Stein turns the air on,
points out there’s too much testosterone in the room
and “not enough talk of art,” she says.
“Sensitive art, compassionate and harsh at the same time.”
Calling for immediate teleportation to Paris,
where such is the reality in the flesh and A.D.
Algren chimes in,
“You’re the shaker of the next world.
It’s new gateways,
broken fences, narrow bridges, gushing women, fabled courses —
all revisited inside the vast womb of doubt —
the forgotten meaning connecting life after life after life,
so don’t embrace a morsel of truth swallowed now or ever! Nevermore!
Shake that sensation!
Alan Paton concludes,
Mend and be mended
build and be built
the mindful man that sees beyond
© Copyright 2023 Daniel Yaryan
Quick Links:
The 10th plus 1 Anniversary of “Beat at the Sweet.” A Beat Poetry Reading (and music) in Tribute to Jack Kerouac & movie release of On the Road at Mill Valley CA. Sweetwater Music Hall Jan. 8, 2013:
Remembering “Literary Outlaw” Jerry Kamstra by Wallace Baine.
Jerry Kamstra Obituary by Daniel Yaryan.
Reflections on Jerry Kamstra by J.Macon King.
THE LAST BOHEMIAN WIZARD (in honor of novelist Jerry Kamstra) by Daniel Yaryan.
And then there was this time…
Poems and kind words by Ari M. Maslow upon the occasion of 10th plus 1 Anniversary of “Beat at the Sweet.”