1. trucker cap
____preferred ball caps. Some people later referred to them as “trucker caps.” The only other kind of hat ___ ever saw ___ wear was blue wool Greek fisherman’s cap; but __ only wore that one when it was cold outside. Regardless of the hat, __ always wore it the same: placed atop __ head like a crown, the brim bent just enough so it would sit comfortably against that large forehead.
___ was the only person__ saw who wore hats that way. Not even the old farmers, the few who were left and clinging onto what land they had left until the final crop was planted and their kids sold the acres for housing developments. Their hats were clamped down on their skulls, prepared for the storm.
__ wore his hat like he carried the storm in a billfold next to a picture of ____ .
2. there and back again
__ keep circling _____ , back around to meet _____ anew. Keep circling back on these poetic roots: Whitman, Kerouac, Basho, Thoreau, HST… then onto Li Po, onto Tu Fu, and on and onto the mad Zen poets like Ikkyu. ___ keep circling back to the original schism, the original sin that split poetry from itself like Cain split himself from Abel. ____ knows they are road signs. ___ knows by the signs ___ is going the right way.
3. Word as cartography
_____ , grad student, anonymous preeminent post-modernist, slaughter house scholar, and maybe the 2nd most subversive person ___ ever met once proclaimed that “Kerouac’s open road has been converted into a warehouse.” 25 yrs later, shambling as ___ is , trudging as ___ is , circling back as__ is only to find ____ on the road Kerouac mapped. Mapped, but did not create.
Thus, ____ must respectfully disagree.
