Frank

I wanted to say

Something about poets.

How jealous I am of those

Geniuses of verse and meter and

Rhyme and metaphor.

Nothing sounded right.

All I know is

My heart always gets stolen

By Ginsberg and Cummings,

O'Hara, Plath, and Donne.

Neruda, Eliot, and Pound.

You know, all of them.

All of those who make something

Stunning and beautiful.

If I had one ounce of their greatness,

Their madness and inspiration...

Oh, it's be swell.

I wouldn't have to be so jealous of them, then.

Yes, jealous is the right word.

They're so fantastic.

What will it take to catapult myself

Up there with them?

To write something anything at all like

What they did?

Sometimes I just go insane.

Example:

Stream of Consciousness/Nighttime Passes Slowly

-

Talking to myself in these

Cold-breath whispers.Late at night, the air condenses

On my shoulders like snow

Or sin, or something cosmic,

Fallen. It can't get up.

And I'm screaming into mirrors

And these dank, empty hallways.

We're shattering reflections here.

Everything screams back in

Running protest.

Haven't you ever heard of

Passive resistance?

-

Our collective mind

Is all swimming in the ever-expanding

Fishbowl, our corner

Of the four-cornered globe

because whatever came first

Leaves last.

Whisper-whisper breathing.

You're calling from

Under the mountains

Of hypocrisy we're digging through here.

Waist-deep in the muck.

Where are the muckrakers

When you need them?

(They've all died and become muck,

So it seems.)

-

The clock hisses out seconds

That're driving us up these slanting walls.

How could eveything average

Sound so damn good?

praise Ginsberg,

That hold devil,

Praise Kerouac.

Who made the mundane

Into the holy screams of poetry.

They threw communism

Into the throes of political passion

And massacred the comma.

The saints with bleeding

Crowns of thorns.

-

Whilst walking down the street

The sky was a swimming pool

And the people's hats floated up and up.

Whisper-whisper.

Shouting.

Why does the coffee maker

click along

And why does the clock

Tick-tick,

Oh the selfish rhythm

Of the life I cannot capture

With a squirming pen.

-

Praise to the ones

Who could.