Neal Cassady (February 8, 1926 - February 4, 1968)

Neal Cassady

(Charles Plymell)

An ego pressed onward

Like a tight skirt in the night

Popeye and Olive Oyl

Swaggering down the street

Jumping parking meters

doing exercise gyrations

Expectations surrounded him

in crowds and beach boy cronies

Tarot card sharks and wood shooters

The Fastest Gun in the West.

I showed him pictures

Of Butch and the wild bunch

"Neal, Was he your father?"

That worried orphaned-look

I'll not forget.

He lived fast, his beds, death rows

to blow genius away, like The Doors,

A race over rails from time's windowpane

sun hot on the Mexican landscape--the

Railroad tracks chromed with cocaine.

(from Six by Charles Plymell. Photo of Neal Cassady from Influx.)