For Jack

to the memory of my dear friend Jack Micheline
(1929-1998)


Jack, you were an ornery cuss
I watched you piss off more people than I could count
say you yell at even gutsy Ron Kovic
when he stole your audience
by reading his own stuff on the sidewalk
outside your reading
you didn't take shit from no one Jack
and yet you were full of love too
yoy loved even those who hated you
but loved most the poor, the lost,
the ones for whom no one else cared
the "fat girls on the bus" you used to talk of--
"they need love more than anyone," you said
and of course the feminists hated you
for saying it,
you were sexist, chauvinist, anti-business
on the wrong side of everybody's tracks
the most politically incorrect person
this side of Rush Limbaugh
but I swear I hardly ever knew anyone
with a bigger heart
or anyone who felt more the pain and beauty
of this strange experience we call life
I watched you blow countless audiences away
even the rough young punks on Broadway
who came to ridicule
and walked away amazed and wondering at your power
to speak the world they lived in
many decades after you came into it
I watched you win literary prizes
like Kesey awarding you "best performance"
at Naropa in 1982 when you made all those superstars
like Burroughs, Waldman, Hoffman, and Ginsberg
pale beside your booming cuss at America
and everybody who when thru life
with their eyes shut
Jack you taught me so much
how to see, how to listen, how to learn from the street
like a garden of rare, beautiful flowers
no one too small, too poor, too insignificant
for your golden attention
Jack, I can't do you justice in this poem
I had the honor of having walked with you
and listened to your wisdom
and felt the touch of your tender eyes on mine
your eyes so special, so full of hurt and understanding
when they weren't aflame with rage
at the injustices of society
capitalism, and the publishing biz
Like Whitman you sang the joy of the body, of "spade kicks"
sex and food and booze and pretty girls
you understood Kerouac's daffiness
and wandered the same lonely path of misunderstood genius
you game me some paintings I'll always cherish
and fifteen pounds of xeroxed manuscripts
that no one would publish
I gave you a ride home from a lonely party in Berkeley
one rainy night when on one else would take you
you told me it was a "mitzvah"
a blessing that would come for helping you
the "mitzvah" was your friendship, Jack
a million memories of one totally unique being
named Harvey Martin Silver Jack Micheline
ragged lion of the streets
and giant of kindness
whose ear was a perennial post office box
that no one will ever be able to replace.

3/1/98