FOR THOSE AROUND THE BONFIRE on Saturday, June 7 at the West Virginia Writers, Inc. conference at Cedar Lakes near Ripley, W.Va., who heard me try an cappella version of my 2004-released song 'I Never Slept With Allen Ginsberg,' above is the official MUCH better produced music video. Plus, we need this remarkable human's speak-truth-to-power poetry and courage ever more in these cruelty-as-policy days in a troubled America.
The tune memorializes an interview I did with the poet at the West Virginia Writers, Inc. conference in 1983, where he was the keynote speaker, after which some of us got stoned with him around the same bonfire pit as above. CONTEXT: The poet was wont to sometimes sleep with young writers at events and write erotic poems about it (see his chapbooks 'Mind Breaths' and 'Plutonian Ode'). I chose not to sleep with him and may not even have been his type as a 26-year-old bearded young reporter for the Huntington Herald-Dispatch. But I DID come up with this tune, recorded and engineered by Bob Webb; featuring Ammed Solomon on hand-drum; Gar Ragland on backing vocals and bass; and me on guitar and vocals. Bobby Lee Messer crafted the video which features bonfire cameos by members of the Beyond the Vale collective in Putnam County, where we shot it.
PS: The video was juried into the “Best Music Video” category in the 2022 Berlin International Art Film Festival. PSS: Hang around as the video concludes for the brief duet between Allen and Paul. PSSS: The song once was played on a public radio program called 'Songs You'll Never Hear on the Radio.' True. And it wasn’t.
“I Never Slept With Allen Ginsberg” | Words & Music by Douglas John Imbrogno, copyright 2004-2025
Allen plays the squeezebox while we pass a joint around. /
Singing poetry of William Blake while sitting on the ground. /
Talking of the Rockefellers, how they rule the roost, /
with their ancient dirty dollars and the power it produced …
CHORUS:
I never slept with Allen Ginsberg, but I miss him still. /
Yet I visit with him now and then — guess I always will.
The campfire spits a dozen sparks, they glow like fireflies. /
Above our heads a thousand stars lie frozen in the skies. /
I have no place to sleep tonight, I didn’t get a room. /
I will lay my head beside this blaze as if it were a womb.
CHORUS:
I’m just a tourist in his world, a poet of his time … /
About all I can offer are these verses and these rhymes.
I ask about Jack Kerouac.” I loved him,” he replies. /
He gazes at me smartly with those drooping, knowing eyes. /
I tell him of a favorite line of poetry he wrote:
‘The million unutterable thoughts of frogs...’ /
“Jack gave me that,” he notes.
With just a single gesture I could maybe share his bed. /
But it’s not his body that I want, but what’s inside his head.
The campfire burns to ember, everybody goes to sleep. /
In a marijuana vision, I see things that seem so deep. /
Trees arround the conference ground, raise up their limbs in praise, /
For the everlasting holy moment of these holy days.
CHORUS:
I never slept with Allen Ginsberg, but I miss him still. /
Yet I visit with him now and then — guess I always will.
Twenty years beyond that night, I lay in reverie, /
With “Mind Breaths” and “Plutonian Ode’s” erotic poetry. /
I could have been a poem abd brought some comfort to the man. /
But I was just a timid boy, I was just a wide-eyed fan…
CHORUS:
I never slept with Allen Ginsberg, but I miss him still. /
Yet I visit with him now and then -— guess I always will. /
I never slept with Allen Ginsberg, but I miss him still. /
Yet I visit with him now and then — guess I always will.
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