I REMEMBER...
the time in 2006 we had coffee
with Fred Dewey and Philomene Long
at a little place off Ocean Park & Main
(I had met them the year before.)
Philomene was very excited we had bought
"Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle" and gushed
"Those were IMPORTANT times"
and told of flying to Paris
to attend a conference on the Venice beats
and drinking a lot of red wine on the plane.
She asked me who my favorite poet was
and I said "Don Marquis."
She didn't know who he was.
The next year, we visited LA again.
I had Philomene's address from the check
she had given me for my book in 2005
(an event I immortalized in my poem
"Her Poetry Lives on Bathroom Walls")
so we stopped by her place
just off the Boardwalk.
I had prepared a package containing
"the lives and times of archy & mehitabel"
along with a Folksingers In Hell CD
and a poetry broadside.
The gate was locked and she didn't answer the buzzer,
so I just wrote a note and
pushed our offering thru the bars
into the courtyard.
We found out later
she had died that weekend.
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