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JOHN THOMAS
GREAT ZEN MASTER went looking for the great Zen master -a sick junkie told me, try the Safeway I think he works down there at the Safeway the manager was very busy cashing paychecks etcetera but he took the time to tell me you must mean Jimmy Bananas we used to call him he don’t work here no more since about two weeks but you ask Swenson that guy over there stamping cans Swenson knows where he lives you ask Swenson so I asked Swenson who said yeah he lives in the Ocean Spray Hotel is he in trouble or something? the lady at the hotel didn’t know anybody by that name never knew any great Zen masters at all if it came to that coming out of the hotel pretty discouraged ran into the junkie again and he said you still looking for that cat man? I just saw him - he’s down on the beach by those rocks of course when I got down to the beach there was nobody there just a dog chasing seagulls just a dog and me standing on wet sand and feeling foolish and the surf booming over those rocks John Thomas was born in Baltimore on December 31, 1930. As a young man he attended Loyola College, considered the priesthood, but joined the U.S. Air Force instead. During the early 1950's,while in the Security Service, Thomas visited Ezra Pound frequently at St.Elizabeth's Hospital. Pound was obviously Thomas' first poetic influence. In 1959,with fourteen dollars in his pocket, Thomas hitch-hiked from Baltimore to Venice, California, where he became an early member of the Los Angeles Beat poets, a group that historian John Maynard, in his 1991 book on the subject called "an outlaw strain in Southern California letters." In the mid and late 1960's, he was friend and support to the late Charles Bukowski. "Thomas was a commanding figure on Los Angels' avant-garde scene for four decades.'" (Elaine Woo, LA Times). His books of poems include The Book of Sleep, The Ghosts of Venice West, and Great Zen Masters & Other Holy Fools. |
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© 2003 Underground Voices |
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