Aram Saroyan: T. C.

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Olympia red (Olympia portable typewriter, no. 156712): photo by Georg Sommeregger, 8 December 2010

A string of bad luck
hit you you
had a stroke

lost your job
when the college
collapsed Angelica

broke her hip, my God
we’re old people now
not young poets

leaving New York
to head West
the planet

re-jiggering as we
head to our grand
not-so-grand

exits.
My first friend
when we

entered the fray
no one knows
what’s going to happen

to anybody
Kerouac told us
closing his own

book, the red
letters of his
concentration

A milder
more domesticated lot
we could still spot

the not-quite-all-there
leading to
calamitous

reprisals
in the papers.
Who cares?

With beautiful wives
we’d lead beautiful lives—
and so we did, for a while

taking our exemplars further
into domesticity,
our contribution

maybe. If you don’t get
your due, the ledger
fills up anyway; we knew that too

from Allen
and Jack.


10/7/10

Aram Saroyan: photo by Beyond Baroque Literary Center, 2 November 2007

Aram Saroyan: T. C., 7 October 2010