I will be great.
I will write an ugly poem about a beautiful thing;
I will write a beautiful poem about an ugly thing.
And when my eyes course them for the last time,
peering into your future through your lenses,
they will see it proven that the two are equals.
And more than anything merely pretty.
And more than anything merely crass.
And more than

I

I will write a novel about a world without art or maybe just a haiku.
I will conquer lack of mindfulness.
I will capture paradox.
I will make everyone else my individual heart.
&&
And who says the brain cannot be understood? I claim it can,
but I claim it cannot be understood by scientists,
if for no other reason than
because
I have these bitter moments
when I wish I was

I

not a human being, not anything composed of flesh and blood and brain,
but an endless glowing out the pupils of a child,
but an endless spasm out the cock of a boy
easing himself into sleep and through puberty heart bursting from quaking chest
and my heart is still bursting from my quaking chest
and I still jerk myself to sleep,
finding some secluded place where I can't see my nakedness and be ashamed.
and I would be the orgasm that brushes against every woman (but never during sex),
and I would be the thought that is ever felt (but never voiced),
and the wind that chills the skin but causes not the shiver,
and a monster that stalks the suburbs but remains unseen,
and the multitudes of forgotten
voices and remembered visions
and the truth that scalds the shaking hands of every screaming psychedelic who ever dared touch

I

I should tell stories that have meaning.
I should tell fables that carry shotguns and conquer nations.
I should lay flat nations and silence politicians and swallow up armies and
set fly every neutron bomb ever conceived in the crazed paranoiac minds of poets and writers
and students and dreamers and all those who can now take prozac and ritalin instead of designer
drugs instead of chronic marijuana instead of recurrent bipolar manias but all will scream
anyhow drunken at blenders microwaves fire hydrants all our other modern innovation trying to scare
the spirits up out from the car and the starlight up out from the streetlights and the forest out from
the skyscrapers and the freedom out from the highways and the verses and stories and learning
out from their heads-- a task at which we succeed miserable.
I should lay flat.
I should read fables.
I should speak nothing.

I

I picture myself a waiter in Los Angeles,
lost to my family//friends//sangha,
or in Mexico, farming, lost to even to myself
(escaping bastard atman at last).
I picture myself escaping myself through my nostrils!
Pulling my spine from my back with a wrench and discarding it!
Taking one old shoe and trading it in
for something sweet to eat for my meal.

Stupid! Crazy!
I would wander the streets homeless drunken ignorant,
I would wear the skin of failure,
I would flay myself, again,
and reincarnate as a right whale,
if only to fight for a while,
briefly, then hunted to extinction.

We are all being hunted to extinction.

V

Hear me America, I am you!
I am you young, I am you white, I am you in college.
I am you clever, I am you drunk, I am you studying.
I am you listening, you stoned, you expostulating.
I am you quiet, walking, outspoken, reading, sleeping, alive!
You ambitious, you greedy, you unrequited...
I am you thirsty.
I am you lonely.

And I am you knowing
every time I turn around
I am not.
I am certainly not conservative, straight, rich.
I am certainly not hateful.
I am certainly not black, not Hispanic, not poor.
And certainly no immigrant.
I am not wealthy. not Christian. not Communist.
no Democrat. no bigot. no genius.
not independent. not well-read. not well-published.
not well-studied. not well-researched. not adult.
certainly not a child. certainly not mindful.
certainly not moral. certainly not normal.
certainly not not
not not ever
Never a hero.

just me

and certainly not Walt Whitman.