I often forget how to write.
Not because I am happy,
and, as they say, happiness writes white.
Nor for any lack of sadness,
for, as I see, sadness is a bottomless ink well.
But for any wild and outrageous feeling,
any like spirit who possesses my hand to start --
with awesome, judging faces sliding on the ceiling,
icons of the mother and god-child
dripping down eternal blue and martyr red,
like arms hanging, waking, pinning!
"Woman, behold your son!"
Behold me, my THC and psilo-sin life,
an endlessly whirling maelstrom of emotion!
flanked by monstrous, winged choirs of Motown
slinging fiery spears, gold rays penetrating!
"Oh, oh, God!" The Ecstasy of St. Philip!
Visions of horse-hung hosts and celestial orbs,
Heaven's dynamo, an **** of screws and cogs!
-- are hid.
I too watched the best minds of my generation,
anesthetized by sanity in a bottle
(id est: pills, pills, pills, pills, pills);
mesmerized by patterns of flashing lights
of digital desperation crying, "affirm me, friend me!" -;
drowned in an endless sea under a twilight of information
or else cats, cats, cats, cats, cats;
and ever afeard of mortal judgment.
“Big boys don’t cry” (so poets do in breathy meter).
A generation asleep
- and though in hopeful dream -
We are placid.
We work obedient.
We speak soft.
Because the whole world is medicated now.
Because the whole world is fixed.
And I wonder if there is a Spirit.
I think, if there is,
We have drugged her.
We have ravished her.
We have wasted her.
And the whole world is silent now.
And the whole world is fixed.
I just watched Howl with James Franco. I love that man. I love that poem.