The master himself, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, celebrated his 89th birthday yesterday, meaning that today is his 89th Birthday Boxing Day! That his blue eyes still sparkle on the shores of North Beach is a testament to the power of will and vision and poetry over the day-to-day assault of the soul-killing machines. We will win this battle- by not fighting it.
In Lesotho, singing is not an activity of the ego, something to be self-conscious about. It is a standard function of a living human being, like eating, sleeping, or walking.
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Then we broke through glittering like the
angels of Gabriel, pouring over the streets
of Portland and Paris and cities all over the world
laughing at the joke of eternity because
we'd finally figured out the punch line,
we sang about consciousness and howled
about our dreams, laughed about the
riddles of death and the comic relief
of immortality,
we danced among prophets and called
ourselves fools and friends and
flooded the fountains with love and light,
we ran our new hands over the smooth
skin of beauty and cried out our
lust with the passion we'd saved
for our secret lonely dreams,
we rose to the fate we'd been promised
once we'd ascended to our rightful destiny,
we shared God's eternal throne,
drank the delicious potions of love,
and swallowed it all whole
safe in the promise that
this shivering ecstasy would finally release us
from the spiritless chain gang march of time.
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Ferlinghetti changed his focus from poetry to painting as he grew older, occupying a studio at Hunters Point for some time where he would paint portraits and explore the world beyond words. I'm still trapped by language and the muse.
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Now I wish I'd been born a painter,
because greens and violets and exploding oranges
can call a burdened soul up to
new summers and brew hope where
stale cups of despair drown dreaming hearts,
but instead I'm just a poet and I don't
have a white gown to wrap my muse in,
just the labyrinth confusion of trying to
capture beauty in this cryptic language
designed to trap the evidence of
grace in an unsolvable maze of
words, words that doom an eternal
angel to the company of the minotaur
in the torturing lands of narrative imagination,
while lesser milkmaid princesses rest eternally
among canvas lilies or bathed
in light and sensual stares on film,
and even Shakespeare's dark lady endures
in visionary words and enlightened
paths to a post-religious Paradise,
but the coincidence of fate dooms
you to these shallow lifeless words of
temporary ink on brittle paper,
destined to dust, verses that cloak you
in their confusion, their jailbound destiny,
and I can't force you to the heavens,
I'm a reluctant warden cursed to imprison
you eternally in lyrics not worth
the inspiring blue of your Aquarian eyes,
the charming hope of your dimpled smile,
the gaze that startles me to waking
every single morning.
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But sometimes, you need a little bit of help to rise above the daily fracas, the minutiae of work and politics and bills and all the day-to-day dreariness that technology has imprisoned us with. Computers were sold to us as the great liberators- but instead, technology has become the ultimate jail, run by the wardens of Wall Street, and the original champions of freedom cry for mercy in a jail for which they unwittingly poured the foundations.
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Let me go suck on that pipe one more time and
see for myself if the stale smoke of
burning bushes can unwind decades of
living inside imagined worlds where "no" is
the only answer to my overeager questions,
let me see if a few more sturdy puffs can
keep me fogged in from a sunny tomorrow
where the missteps that I dwell on
every minute are undone with a simple wave of my hand,
let me see if getting high can lift me
off to a heaven-level view of a
charmed life that flows steady between its banks,
the riverboat captain might dream of what
goes on in streamside cities under
the dancing lights of Friday nights
but his job calls him on, many miles
to go bound to where the water takes him,
and he's happier in the water than he can
ever be gasping for breath in a sober
life where dreams come true, dreams
stand still,
and the river keeps on running,
one quick hit and I'm jumping back in.
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While I slept last night, my beloved Oakland A's took the field for a premature and distant Opening Day in Japan. The muse, like most of the A's, is, alas, on the disabled list.
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One muse was a fastball pitcher, a late-inning closer,
ready with a few quick pitches to seal the deal,
she came in with a big lead and thought she could finish,
but a few bad pitches and one too many questions,
a little bit of doubt, and she left the game with a blown save.
Another muse tried to throw the hard high heat, but her specialty
was a soft, surprising curve that she learned from Shakespeare
but didn't throw often enough, she spent too much time
worrying about who was in the bullpen, and
didn't last long enough to take home the win.
Yet another muse was a screwball artist, she came in
looking like a standard middle-rotation starter,
nothing special about her stuff but she looked
like an angel in the right uniform, I thought
she'd log a few solid innings, get through the rough
parts of the game, once she started throwing junk
the batters couldn't hit, but no catcher could handle
the strange motions and the unexpected curves,
so she left the manager with no choice but
to call out another pitcher to get the job done,
and the newest muse, she's an all-star stopper, she's
got pinpoint control on every look in her repertoire,
she can lead her coaches along even through
the heartbreak innings and the scary bases-loaded jams,
romancing the scouts with her seductive gameday gaze,
she always breaks up the threatening middle-of-the-order rallies
by tossing perfect words when the batter lusts for an opening,
she never asks for a break, she just powers on through with
tempting pitch after tempting pitch,
I can never keep track of what she'll throw next, nor
get my ink-filled bat to keep pace with her change-ups,
she leaves me face down and crying in the batter's box
every time I try to step up to the plate.
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It's politics season. My main man in the Portland mayoral race, Christopher Rich, attracted this insightful column on the front page of last Wednesday's Metro section.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news
Whatever you might think of Chris' forthright attitude or his controversial stances, there can be no doubt that Portland would be a better place with Christopher Rich as mayor. Chris is the real Portland citizen in the mayor's race- the one who knows the city from the streets as well as from the skies. Chris has always demanded excellence of those around him- and I have no doubt that he would bring out the best in everyone at city hall.
Spring is here. Hope comes easier when the sun is shining. Use its shining rays to illuminate the hidden poetry in your daily lives....
-MVK
