City Lights Bookstore by Mark Tulin

Check out this online magazine with a quirky name. Rat’s Ass Review. Scroll down to the T’s (alphabetical order by authors) for my poem “City Lights Bookstore” by Mark Tulin. Photo taken at an L.A. art supply store.

CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE
By Mark Tulin
 
I walked through the original door
of the iconic bookstore,
with creaky floors of history,
Ferlinghetti reading
Coney Island of the Mind,
and took me on a rollercoaster,
had a hotdog from a vendor
on my way to enlightenment
 
Allen Ginsberg said hello,
shook my hand, gave me a kiss
on the mouth, and asked
if I wanted Garcia Lorca melons
or Walt Whitman’s fancy tasting
artichokes from the literary supermarket
 
And the man at the counter
said he knew Jack Kerouac
and Neal Cassady, who invited him
to see the Buddha at Big Sur
 
A stream-of-conscious fast read,
in the laid-back confines
of the City Lights Bookstore,
Poet Laureates shared their verse,
as I commiserated with the spirits,
holding their lives in my hands.