Something from the beat days

this poem tapped me on the shoulder unasked this morning as i was waiting for the green orbiter bus to arrive.

i wrote it more than three years ago when i was reading a lot of beat poetry. it happened one morning when i was getting dressed. suddenly the first two lines popped into my head. i had to stop buttoning my shirt and write them down. then the next lines came. i was able to finish getting dressed eventually and hop in the car to work, but the poem kept coming. i held an old receipt on my steering wheel and scrawled the lines on it with a pen as i drove. when i got to work, i quickly typed it all up and this is what came out. mind you, the editor in me came out eventually and made a couple of minor tweaks and changes, but this is mainly the product of inspiration which i was fortunate enough to get out of the way of and just let happen.

in some respects, i didn't write the poem so much as just write it down...


It Is What It Is

Poetry?
Infamy, the last of me,
Simpleton logic in Zen-like trances,
Dances of the mind-ballet,
Steps, hopes, long pregnant stares
Past the rows of chairs into the foyer
Burst through the double door of brain lock habit thought
From naught to ought in commercialesque prose.

Don't alienate,
Incorporate bland commonality
So it sparks energy, heart-life squeezes.
Please the knees of the march men,
The beat song, the sweet song
Hoarse with enthusiasm, applause,
Cause and effect.
Reject the spiderstep entry.
Speak your mind, brother!
Decline the whine to line the stacks and spines
Of whines that line the stacks
Backed in rows for your perusal,
Refusal to bow down to the push of apathy
Sympathy to the word sinews
The mouth thews of utterance
Spewed in elegant soliloquy.

Salivate the wait state.
Hate the silence,
Love the rhythm schism
Syllables split
Ground down into primal motion, emotion, motivation,
Exhalations of me on the windowpane of the morning bus ride
That divides my prehistory.

So you ask me of poetry?
And the answer is.
13/3/01