"American Progress"

I cling to the thought
of peace.
not world but
American

Where people both
pro and con come together
for the progress of the nation

Perhaps I am an optimist

or perhaps

I am dreaming while I keep drinking at my local watering hole.

Weekend Literary Inspirations:

Regarding the Writer's Life
By-Line: E. Hemingway, p. 185

"You must be prepared to work always without applause. When you are excited about something is when your first draft is done. But no one can see it until you have gone over it again and again until you have communicated the emotion, the sights and the sounds to the reader, and by the time you have completed this the words, sometimes, will not make sense to you as you read them, so many times you re-read them. By the time the book comes out you will have started something and it is all behind you and you do not want to hear about it. But you do, you read it in covers and you see all the places that now you can do nothing about. All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general dying of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you to Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens. You are just as well off without these reviews. Finally, in some other place, some other time, when you can't work an feel like hell you will pick up the book and look in it and start to read and go on and in a little while say to your wife, "Why this stuff is bloody marvelous."
And she will say, "Darling, I always told you it was." Or maybe she doesn't hear you and says, 'What did you say?" and you do not repreat the remark.
But if the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written and reading it over you see that this is so you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work."

Poetry and Prose...

"The next day"

Sincere exhaled laughter screaming from tree branches
lived in by sparrows
not anymore by crows

the sky is lighter, the unwoven streets less rough
with edges softened of padded concrete

tolerable days arrive once again
anger has subsided making way
for joy
I may spring for the expensive booze
this time

an asphyxiated feeling

even if short-lived.

I hope not
I have to hope not

Poetry and Prose...

"Future"

Laying down my head
on a slab of concrete pillows
still and
motionless

with fear and anger
blistering in the sun of
a thousand fireflies surrounding
the clouded air.

All alone.

dreaded anger lingers the mind
where do I turn, who do I
turn to?

The beer bottle is my genie bottle.
suffocated breaths as I take gulp by gulp
I stare drunk eyed at the emptied demon rum

"Where are my three wishes"?

Poetry and Prose...

"Normal"

Normality opens the mind
severs the body
soils the soul

Blurred vision viewing cannons
spewing dust in spurts
Normalcy is a disease

Hording the inner workings of
the machine
a disease conscious

contagious

live crazy.

Poetry and Prose...

"Improvisation"

Coming out swinging like antlers
on parade
Muscling its way through
the crowd

Booze Hounds, Run Downs
Whores
All were surrounded by light
Nothing comes, nothing goes

The Whore
She sure came deep throating
The Run Down
Hounds with booze in their
Hands

Weekend Literary Inspirations:

The Origins of Joy in Poetry

By Jack Kerouac
Chicago Review, 1958

The new American poetry as typified by the SF Renaissance (which means Ginsburg, me, Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, McClure, Corso, Gary Snyder, Phil Lamantia, Phil Whalen, I guess) is a kind of new-old Zen Lunacy poetry, writing whatever comes into your head as it comes, poetry returned to its origin, in the bardic child, truly ORAL as Ferling said, instead of gray faced Academic quibbling. Poetry & Prose had for a long-time fallen into the false hands of the false. These new pure poets confess forth for sheer joy of confession. They are the CHILDREN. They are also childlike graybeard Homers singing in the street. They SING, they SWING. It is diametrically opposed to the Eliot shot, who so dismally advises his dreary negative rules like the objective correlative, etc, which is just a lot of constipation and ultimately emasculation of the pure masculine urge to freely sing. In spite of the dry rules he set down his poetry itself is sublime. I could say a lot more but ain't got time or sense. But SF is the poetry of a new Holy Lunacy like that of ancient times (Li Po, Han Shan, Tom O Bedlam, Kit Smart, Blake) yet it also has the mental discipline of pointing out things directly, purely concretely, no abstractions or explanations, wham wham the true blue song of man.

(His complete view of himself as a poet)