It was a friend of a friend connection in the loosest possible way. I’d only been in town a week. I was meeting up with a “friend” I’d only met once before. We were meeting near Jackson Square.
I wondered how people coordinated things before cell phones. Sounded like a headache. When I arrived he was already there. He was talking to one of those street-poets. “Pay what you think it’s worth” types. He had a typewriter and a showerless smell. He was as tall as anyone I’d ever met.
We all talked briefly. I’ve known a lot of poets, most of them don’t read poetry. So I asked who his influences were. I was surprised to find we liked a lot of the same ones. Especially Rimbaud. We bonded over that pretty quickly.
The conversation ended flat and we all moved on. Over my shoulder I heard the typewriter. Clack. Clack. Clack.
Over the following months I ran into him again and again. New Orleans is a smaller place than you might realize. We would talk whenever we had the time. Exchange ideas and stories. He spent a lot of time in Tangiers. He went there to write a novel.
To make a confession, I never finished reading his book. The first novel someone writes is usually not something they should publish. Especially when their background is in poetry. It read like a poet trying to write a novel. Emphasis in all the wrong places.
One day; I was feeling like a detached Jack Keourac, listless and meandering. A Dharma Bum. I walked around and around in the French Quarter. My only purpose was to think.
While coming down Royal St. I saw him getting ready to post up for the day. We started talking, he motioned, I sat down on the street. We kept going on. I asked him to tell me about Tangiers. To tell me about traveling. To tell me what I was looking to hear.
He turned to me and smiled. Then he started punching away at the keys on his typewriter.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
I knew what he was doing. He was writing me a poem. So I started writing one for him. He ripped the page from his typewriter as did I from my notebook.
He said “oh it’s an exchange, you’ve got one for me?”
I said “yeah, if you like it.”
I read the poem he wrote me:
At the behest of the council Of queries and answers This poem Is not a poem, it is a wisp On the winds, a Simple trick, Just like the comfort Of a Cigarette: why suck on a stick
I looked up, he’d read mine with a twisted grin. We looked at each other. We told each other we liked the poems. In either case, it may or may not have been true. I stood up.
“What’s next?” I said.
“Well I’m going to sit here on my typewriter for a while and try to make some money.” He said.
That wasn’t what I meant. I meant what’s next after all of it? Where do you go from here? What’s the next “right” move? How does this movie go? Do I have the power to change the next scene? If so, what do I need to do? How do I want it to look?
Maybe I didn’t know what I meant. Anyways, I knew he couldn’t tell me what I needed to hear. So I just nodded. And walked away. I put his poem in my wallet and forgot about it until I saw it today.
I wondered where he was and what happened to him? Though I know that probably he’s sitting street-side on Royal. Clack. Clack. Clack.
I wonder if he ever looked at the poem I wrote for him again? As far as I recall it read:
Life, life in every breath Bringing me nearer and nearer to my death Beauty, in motion and in every step Walking me closer and closer to the depths So I weep, So I weep So this is how things must be
When's the next rucksack revolution? And how has wireless internet changed it's shape?
Before phones we would see weirdos and go up to them and talk.
Locations were regular meeting places with groups.
If you diddnt have a land line you just disappeard into the eather.