If she believed in reincarnation
(which she doesn't, in the traditional sense)
she would be Jack Kerouac

drifting the continent via parallel steel armed
with fountain pen, stopping for wine
parties and ink supply refills.

I ask, If you would be Kerouac, then who
would I be?  Considering, chewing
the butt end of a Papermate

she replies, Crowley.  In theory
and practice, this seems ludicrous
to me: Holing up

at Boleskine, undermining the Victorian
mores of the centuries' nineteenth click.
I imagine the Dharma bum and the Antichrist

hiding with migrant workers
in a yurt under the oppression
of Fresno Valley air sludge,

The Beat burrowing into the belly
of the Beast.  Crowley, an avid climber,
might have discovered his mantra

at the weather observation station
atop Desolation Peak and stood on his head
(or on Jack's) shouting Blah! at the top

of his lungs.  Would have flourished
in that Berkeley shack, playing
rounds of Yabyum fueled by cabernet

sauvignon and fifties homogeneity.
You may be right, I say.  She winks,
a perfect avatar, tracing a heptagram into my palm.

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Copyright © 2005 by Calaveras Station and the CSUS English Department.