Man Cannot Live on Jack London Alone

For Christopher McCandless

Man can’t live on Jack London alone;
They told you then, they tell you now
You’re dead and well preserved in celluloid.
Alexander Supertramp, fierce throated wonderboy,
You infuriate the know-betters, and the hungry.
Some to gawk at your rusty, sad, little ending,
They come to make it bigger, to pack it full of meaning,
Just like you did to yourself, the inside out.
Histrionic youth leads a great light when you live,
It’s impossible to sort through now,
With your boots still there on the bus floor.

The writers and the screen prop you high heroic,
Is it one of ten thousand fates ironic,
The one who got lost more than anything
Made a hero for stupidity, an idiot for sainthood
Dreamer, for the better, dreamer, for the worse
They spit about you still, wild Alex
With your giant, desperate, innocence
They can’t help picking you apart
What are you running from?
The motives, the complex
The fights and the control
If they all knew, to run is a reason
It might be ten times easier to move
For those with an itch grown in the bone
But I have to believe some spice would be gone
Something would be lost in the shift of living

Alex, to fight and die somewhere blank and wide,
In your head, in London’s imagined landscape.
Some see the hope of you every moment
They’re cowed down by paths;
The rest are satisfied in their scorn,
They can’t stomach your wasted youth
--Foolish, beautiful, gone, lived, youth --
The kind that makes whole worlds.

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This poem is two or three years old. I should definitely re-do it. It's muddled.