Member-only story
A Tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry written this day 2/23/2021
I've never been to Coney Island,
I've never been to L.A.,
but I know these places all the same,
their ephemeral visages and skylines,
their storybook stories of love, of injustice,
of adventure like a ferris wheel
careening down a city street to the sea,
all its lights flickering and shooting sparks.
I've seen the wind act like a whiffle bat
smacking its ball, the sun,
back and forth across the sky,
with the moon dodging this play
by erasing itself slowly as a quarter
taking thirty days to disappear
when flipped from a magician's hand.
Sure, I've wanted to be a firefly,
a poet, a saboteur of ugliness,
but I've long been a refugee,
an escape artist constantly
breaking the surface of the water
after escaping the safe
he had promised the crowd
he could drown in.
