An Old Poem: 38 Easy Steps to Carlyle’s Everlasting Yeah After living with Rod Mckuen in the horse-filled streets of Sandusky Arise and sing naked And dance naked And visit your mother naked And be nervous and tragic and plugged in And pay the waiter in kisses And pay the beggar in silver And embrace the silent and scream for them And grab watches and ask them for directions And be a carpenter and redeem all the sins of the University of Illinois And look for Walt Whitman beneath the concrete in the street And put your thumbs in your ears and ask somebody to dance The bossa nova and hear him or her say Sorry I left my carrots at home And eat/write/cry/drink/smoke/laugh and keep holy the Lord’s Day all in the same breath And ride in subways, whistling at every stop for no reason whatsoever And stroll along Michigan Avenue with your arms around your comrade, the sky And be a blue angelic tricycle And be any martyr’s unused coffin And be you or me – it doesn’t matter which And write poems like Pablo Neruda does And throw them into the street/into the wind And be Christ waiting at the bus stop for a passing crucifixion and not having enough exact change to mount the cross And be a mail-order clerk at Sears and send free TV sets to all the charity wards at Cook County Hospital And free the masses and free yourself from the masses And march on Moscow, searching with burnt-out eyes for Zhivago And be afoot with your vision and be afoot with my vision And be underfoot and underground And sell magic sparrows at the Maxwell Street Flea market And carry flowers to the poets’ corner and water them with enormous Byronic tears And wander through midday downtown Chicago humming “the St. Louis blues” And wear your best strawberry hat all night long And know the meaning of nothing And guess the meaning of everything And be a mind-blistered astronaut with nothing to say to the sun but Honey I’m yours.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 18:01:54 +0000
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