I reached enlightenment going 75 on a highway on a summer night
No visions of Blake
Only spirits of Kerouac and Thelonious Monk beside me as I sat glued to the wheel
The psalms read as tail lights
The night smelt like memories of Boy Scout camp in the hills
I saw all of the kids of the American night as they should be
O holy angels
Fresh cut sunflower souls
Finding cute boys in Nashville or Indiana
Breathing in every ounce of childhood nostalgia with cigarette whispers
The only cigarettes I smoke are the secondhand whisps from close friends
The smell of cigarettes reminds me of lost love
No tears of Marx
Karl Marx is asleep tonight and all is quiet
Josef Stalin sits in an alley
Gut rot drunk and weeping
Somewhere in South America Trosky weeps through holes in his head the shape of ice picks
O American children
Drinking 100 proof distilled American passion
A stronger high than all the drugs I have never taken
A stronger kick than all the boots of the ones who won't put up with apathy any longer
Tonight we are the ones who are holy and crying
The chill of the night seeps into my bones and I shake with the earth and with drums and saxophone and everything sounds as it should
Paul Robeson my heart goes out to you wherever you are tonight
I stand watch so the skeletons of Babylon can throw stones at you no longer
The shattered glass reminds us the struggle isn't over
O American Angels listen to me ramble
I have sat in ecstasy and seen the smile of God and everything will turn out ok
Death comes when it has to
Don't rush it my friends
Until then raise whatever glasses you have as high as you can
Use the stones they throw to build your foundation
Kiss the ones you know in your heart to be holy
Don't worry how loud you are yelling
This is America and you don't have to be sorry
This is as beautiful as we allow it to be
This is as many tears as we can afford
Only saints cry on Thursdays
And tonight the wisdom of sages are written on bathroom stalls for whoever cares enough to read it
Bless everyone who sneezes
Don't  tell yourself that you aren't enough
Don't fool yourself that there is an enough
You are already as complete as you can be
You are the sunflower soul
You are enlightenment
Going 75
Down a highway
In the American night

In Genesis it talks about God giving people the breath of life
I believe that this happened and I am thankful
It is also said that Siddhartha Gautama reached enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree by observing his breath in meditation for three days
I have always considered the Buddha to be a pretty smart guy
My one issue with running is I have trouble breathing
When I'm stressed I take in deep breaths
I have the repeated verse of Machinehead stuck in my head

Breathe in
Breathe out

The air around us connects us to all living things
Sometimes I think that the air I breathe is the same air Allen Ginsberg once breathed and I feel glad
I once was in the same room as the air Bob Dylan breathed and that was pretty cool
On nights of poetry I breathe in the same air as my friends, whom I love dearly

Breathe in
Breathe out

I started meditating last week and I want to tell everyone
If I'm obnoxious I'm not sorry
But when you have lived a life of constant divided attention you enjoy not worrying about anything
I am hesitant to find someone who takes my breath away
Because at times my breath is the only thing I own
I am afraid to drown
I am afraid to suffocate
Breath is what connects us to all living things
So breathe

Breathe in
Breathe out

My love is like an old stubborn dog
It's tired and sick and sits around all day
But dogs are know for being loyal and sometimes that's all I can offer
The problem with this love is it still has many tricks to learn and I promise to be a good student
But you gotta be patient because this old dog gets wrapped up too much in its own self pity to know better half the time and if it gets too mopey it doesn't know what to do with itself
But even dogs in their eldest years need the love of any of those young scrappy puppies that go running around ******* on the carpet
My love does not **** on carpets
And neither do I

But there is something you must understand
If things go south and we split
If I leave, this old love isn't going to follow
For better or worse this love is yours
It belongs to you
I can't take it back, no matter how I try
You can do what you want with it
You can put it in the back room of your mind and forget the key
It will sit and it will stay exactly where you leave it
But nothing that happens and no mater how bad you treat it,
With you it will remain
So if you are going to come looking for love in my heart come prepared
And please be gentle

How much of the world is nothing more than what we experience?
William S Burroughs believed that everything you experience in your life you were meant to, that it was made for you
He wasn't very religious but in a way I am
He argues that every opinion is both subjective and objective
Because there is always an object, and a subject experiencing it
I'm sure, however, he was a better judge of art than I am

There is nothing more bittersweet than hearing the poetry of someone who you know is about to die
But here I am at nearly 1 am
Listening to your song

How much of the world has passed me by because I'm afraid to get my hands ***** or get my heartbroken?
I talk about our past creating who we are and then I spend months pushing no envelopes and not even stepping near a single line
How disappointed Hunter Thompson must be

I know I write a lot about dead men I idolize
Yet all the women in my life whom I love are living and although many of them have gone their separate paths in life I look fondly on every moment spent and know that no words I possess can describe them.
We are living in a world completely possessed by the human mind
And I promise to be more than along for the ride

I am a simple soul
When I die I want to be remembered fondly as a pretty decent poet
I don't want fanfare
But if I receive it I won't complain
Most of all I want to be remembered
My greatest fear is that everything I am and everything I have ever done will be reduced to a forgotten blip in the back of someone's mind
How I so much wish I had the power and strength to start fires I have no intention of putting out
My greatest philosophy is that a majority of people who do evil know **** well what they are doing, they just don't care
And enough of them can get away with it to inspire the next generation
Let me inspire a generation that won't allow evil to be done and go unpunished
Leniency towards evil is a joke that stopped being funny long before now
It never really was funny to start out with
Sometimes I catch myself thinking of all the rocks thrown at Peekskill and how they got away with it
I think of the four dead in Ohio
Even now I think of Sacco and Vanzetti and cry

I am a simple soul
I only wish that you remember those that came before us and sacrificed everything they had
And then I hope you think of me

I am in love with Allen Ginsberg's Sunflower Sutra
And I am in love with sunflowers
But those two facts aren't necessarily connected
If someone ever asks me when I think I will die my reply will be "exactly when I need to"
I once heard of a Buddhist philosophy where you envision everything you own broken, so when the world beats everything you own into the dirt you can smile because it is a fact you have already accepted
The things you own cannot be truly yours until you accept that they are not eternal
I find it important to smile at everyone I make eye contact with
Even if the smile I produce is the usual awkward mess
I don't carry on this practice with the idea that "smiles are contagious"
I do it because I have spent enough of my life with the look of distaste across my face to grow tired of it
This poem is nothing special
It will start no revolutions
It will be forgotten
It will not make you or me or anyone else holy
That's not what it's for
This poem is for a small smile and a chuckle on a night where everything is so bleak and dull
This poem is for me to remember the little things that make this life of mine worth all the trouble
You can feel free to use it too
I won't mind

Such powerful emotions on a Monday morning
Becoming nostalgic to music I don't listen to
Remembering the girl that was my angel
But has since become angelic no longer
I feel wide awake in a sleepless generation
I feel lost in a generation where there is new meaning in finding oneself

At 10:08 am you don't truly comprehend how much you actually slept
My eyes are heavy though I have been awake for hours
At 10:09 am you think to remind yourself that you aren't the only soul experiencing a downward spiral
The only true crime in America is getting caught
The only true sin in America is minding your own business
But if your skin is light enough and your list of friends is big enough then ****** you can get away with anything

I have never been so angry with my personal life that I've punched a wall
I have yet to be so angry with the political world that I've thrown a brick through a window
But somewhere in America walls are being punched and bricks are being thrown and God bless all the punchers and throwers
Yes you say there are "better ways of dealing with your emotions"
But your treatment plan doesn't work for everyone
Some people meditate to deal with stress
Others make holes in dry wall and from what I have heard both ways work

I ask myself at 10:14 if I really want to get romantic love again
Probably not I tell myself
At least not soon
Romantic love and ****** love are mostly lost on me and I turn my love to friends, family, and animals like the birds outside my window
And when I say I love America I don't mean the government
In America we draw too thin of a line between protest and disrespect
Politics is always violent because people are violent
And you can't change the natural tendency people anymore than you can change the rotation of the earth

So next time you get so frustrated with the lack of justice, compassion or another buzz word that goes with being a decent person
And there is nothing better for you to do than punch a wall
Think of me
Because no matter what
I'm rooting for you