Kerouac Alley

They're sitting in Kerouac alley

between City Lights and Vesuvio's

passing a little sparkly glass pipe

from his grey scraggly beard-framed lips

to her dirty blond-framed weary

twenty-something pouty chapped ones.

Then he takes a melodeon

out of a canvas duffel bag

and plays a few random notes.

Their feet point at the brass quotations

embedded between the cobblestones:

“Poetry is the shadow

cast by our streetlight

imaginations" L. Ferlinghetti

Babs and Joe from Idaho

look at the Pipe-smoking pair

and wrinkle their noses, take turns

in front of the mural on the side

of the alley striking poses,

then pop into Vesuvio's,

where the ghosts live on the walls

and the spirits live in the bottles

ranked in rows behind the bar.

A black and white eight by ten photo

near the window dated years ago

shows a bored nude model

holding a half-furled umbrella

slung over her shoulder.

She gazes off camera,

like it's in between shots,

and she's thinking about something

that happened this morning

or waits for her later

after she collects the ten dollars

she'll get for posing.

The note at the bottom

of the photo says the session

was for someplace called

the Academy of Dirt.