If all the good people were clever,
  And all clever people were good,
The world would be nicer than ever
  We thought that it possibly could.

But somehow 'tis seldom or never
  The two hit it off as they should,
The good are so harsh to the clever,
  The clever, so rude to the good!

So friends, let it be our endeavour
  To make each by each understood;
For few can be good, like the clever,
  Or clever, so well as the good.

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.

This may sound easy. It isn't.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel - but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling - not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why?

Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time - and whenever we do it, we are not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've written one line of one poem, you'll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world - unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn't.

It's the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel.

Grandma's hands clapped in church on Sunday morning.
Grandma's hands played the tambourine so well.
Grandma's hands used to issue out a warning,
She'd say, “Billy don't you run so fast,
Might fall on a piece of glass,
Might be snaked there in that grass,”
Grandma's hands

Grandma's hands sooth the local ***** mother
Grandma's hands used to ache sometimes and swell
Grandma's hands used to lift her face and tell her,
She'd say, “Baby Grandma understands,
That you really loved that man,
Put yourself in Jesus' hands.”
Grandma's Hands

Grandma's hands used to hand me piece of candy.
Grandma's hands picked me up each time I fell.
Grandma's hands, boy the really came in handy
She'd say, “ Mattie don't you whip that boy.
What you want to spank him for?
He didn't drop no apple core,”
But I don't have Grandma anymore,
If I get to heaven I'll look for
Grandma's hands.

Rotating bodies, confusion of sound
Negative imagery holding us down
Social delusion, clearly constructed
Human condition, morals corrupted
Trapped in reaction, lawlessness, war
Dissatisfaction from bowels to core
Devils technology, strategy for
Human mythologies, urban folklore
Sick of psychology, counterfeit cure
Wicked theology robbing the poor
Scheme demonology mislead the pure
Strict and strategically, studying war
Light shown in darkness, image exposed
Few can see through the new emperor's clothes
Lustful this hussle turns humans to hoes
When the blind lead the blind
Just more trouble and woes
It's the mind that they chose
It's designed to stay closed
Standards of jokers, court just a logic
Sick looking cosmics, from schoolyards to college
Primitive man with civilised knowledge
System collapse and he still won't acknowledge
God is the saviour, studies behaviour
Trying to fix the mind that he gave ya
Stiff-necked scholars on prescription meds
Wishing their problems were all in their heads
Moral dilemma, pride is the root
Misguided from youth, heart divided from truth
Egyptians and Grecians, spiritually dead
Imperially led, by the gods in their head
Motives and thoughts
Industrial wealth
Global economy, in for itself
Heart full of madness, covered with kind
Pleasure designed to take over your mind
Furnished in godliness, painted in good
This talented priesthood got real saints misunderstood
While classes in government, set up the veil
And cultivate minds for more mythical tales
Typical Hollywood follies good girl
While vice and corruption take over the world
Motives and thoughts
Check your motives and thoughts
Blind with the wickedness deep in your heart
Modern day wickedness is all you've been taught
Lied to your neighbours, so you get ahead
Modern day trickery is all you've been fed
Motives and thoughts
Check your motives and thoughts

Addicted, I can't see the road
Circling, I'm in static mode
Nothing makes sense anymore
Caught in thoughts that don't exist
Need to keep my eyes wide,
farewell ignorant bliss.
Spider web memories
haunting my mind
On the ocean floor
you can't keep track of time
That voice telling me I'll surely fall behind
So ill follow the waves and make friends with the fishes
Hoping one day I'll understand what all this is

Can you stare into your own eyes?
Can you see truth amongst the lies?
When you look at your soul,
what do you recognise?
Wise man shine on me
Give me something only I can see
The mountains are too far to reach
The waters, to vast and deep
Shoot me now or forever hold your peace
Showing me the way to my own demise
I pray, but even the lord can't help me