Whatever Happened

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—after David Ignatow—

Whatever happened to that kid who worked
at Dalk Garage as a steady,
driving that ancient ramshackle number 43
through the streets of Manhattan?
He led a rock band on weekends
and practiced nightly with them.
Lean, quiet, intense, at the dispatcher's window
he checked out his trip sheet quickly
and with an abstract air,
as if remembering some private breakthrough
of the evening before.
He had flunked out of college in New Hampshire
and landed here to make the music scene.
He wanted to be the next Iggy Pop
though in those days he sounded
a little more like Television.
Talking to me, it was always about rock music,
not about baseball or the lottery.
What has happened to him?
How far did he go after leaving us
to lead his band as a regular day job?
Is he still around and at my age carrying on,
as I carry on my poetry, stubbornly, passionately?
Does he still talk and think of rock music?
He himself played lead guitar.
I can still see him sitting with that speckled notebook
on the shape-up line in case the inspiration hit.
He was working on a rock opera, but if it was
ever produced, I never heard about it.
Old-timers must have figured as he scribbled
furiously in that notebook
he was working a numbers sheet.
He was a lean, hungry looking kid
with whom I liked to rap sometimes, as I made my way
past the demands of my slam poetry
and the daily wail of the jackhammer supervisors.
After he left to lead his band,
I took over his shift, driving that ramshackle cab
through the swarming streets.

(Adapted from a journal entry by David Ignatow,
(from the Notebooks of David Ignatow, Sheep's Meadow Press, 1973)