Elegy for Corso and so much else

Gregory Corso, 1930-2001

i remember the first time i saw you
at the standingroomonly studentshangingoutthewindows poetry reading
in some big hall yale new haven, 1959,
when crazy stuff like that really did not happen --
not yet -- when decorum prevailed
and we were waiting and didn’t know it.
ginsberg there, on the edge of the stage, legs dangling,
ringing Tibetan finger cymbals
(we’d never seen before);
paying no attention, everyone guessing
what was supposed to happen next.

and you came striding down center aisle,
yelling words we couldn’t make out,
an intruder deciding it’s time to have his say;
italian curls and big, startling black eyes,
a crazy man for sure. but no,
it was the other poet, and you climbed on stage,
goony and boyish, laughing, probably stoned
and read to us from a bunch of crumpled-up pages
you took out of your pocket
and from that little red and white text GASOLINE.
strange damn poems - funny, odd, off the map we
had been taught to follow, some other territory.
or maybe it was you yourself
and not the poems. you, so unlike
the poets we’d studied; too zany, too close to us, too
flawed and coarse, too much strange delight,
or, maybe the sense of some
approaching wildness we couldn’t grasp,
some confused ecstasy, a decade unscheduled,
disasters waiting, unimaginable,
heroin they tried to keep from you,
and the “being-torn-apart-haunted-with-meanings,”
searching for the beautiful worlds.

and now new century, swifter than delight, meanings
sogged out, beaten by information,
and he’s gone, the black-eyed boy,
Mrs. Corso’s kid --
Wow!
we’re a memory.