Three recent posts at the Poet Outlaws Facebook page stirred me to reply in prose what I perhaps could have cast into verse, if I weren't so lazy?
Poetic Outlaws
Why I Write Poetry
By: Julia Vinograd
Because I can't trust God
to look after the world and my friends.
Worship sure, wandering forests of legend
braiding flowers from the Tree of Life in my hair
while God's beard storms overhead.
But not trust. People die. Everyone dies.
It may be God's will but it's my won't.
Sea turtles live a thousand years.
My words can't become flesh.
My words can't heal an open wound.
But I am a poet and I know we need more time
to make our own huge splendid mistakes,
mistakes we deserve, not just the small clinical mistakes
built into out bodies.
We could have many-colored rings spinning around our minds
like the rings of Saturn.
We could map constellations around a lover's face
and every child could be the Messiah
because the world always needs saving.
God, it is a very beautiful world,
but no thank you, it is not enough.
No thank you for the sunrise when our eyes go blind.
A blank page is a place to list the creation
we weren't given. A shopping list of eternity
where we're never too sick to swallow fresh blueberries
and where the dance never ends.
A blank page is a paper bird to fold up and fly.
I can't change anything but I am a poet
and if I can't trust God I must speak
for the world and my friends.
Want more. Want so much more.
Test each day and night for ripeness
like a melon at the market.
You're crucified on the hands of a clock,
pull out those nails.
I'm throwing you a rope of words.
Hold on.
Julia Vinograd was a revolutionary street poet who threw bubbles instead of bricks. Her poetry was profound and she had a keen eye on what was happening in the world. She felt the suffering of the human race deeply and beautifully captured it in her poetry.
A feature documentary is being made right now about this important street poet titled: ‘Julia Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone'.
Sloan Bashinsky
Beautiful.
I lived off and on the street maybe 6 years. Poetry started erupting out of me in the early l990s, before I was homeless. A 4-year dark night of the soul came, and a great deal of luminous and other poetry with it. I knew God existed, whereas before, I had only believed. A black night came, and there was nothing brewing in me but plotting every day how to kill myself, for 16 months. I was resurrected from that dead zone by something clearly not of this world. The first stint at being homeless came and lasted a few years, as more poetry came, some of which I could not assign to my own creation. I was not homeless and more poverty came, I was homeless again, and very little poetry came. V/ery little poetry came since then. Since late 2017, I'm not homeless. I'm 80. I when I wrote poetry, it was because it just came out of me. I did not sit down to try to make a poem. The poem sat me down to show me something about me, about life, and about much more, I came to view all of life as poetry.
Sheila
OMG! Your reply, which in fact is itself a poem, literally made me gasp ..an adjective for which I'm struggling to find... it was positively powerful.
Sloan Bashinsky
There's nothing like seemingly endless grindings into dust and oblivion to season a soul and however it expresses on this small backwater planet in an unfathomable universe, which I seriously doubt just up and came into being without a little nudge from ... something .
Poetic Outlaws
AS I LAY DYING
Charles Bukowski
The time comes to go deeper
into self and the time comes
when it is more innocent
or easier to die
like bombers over
Santa Monica,
and I remember
laying there in the sand,
myself 20 years old,
reading Faulkner
because the name sounded good
and being vaguely excited
by something
that was not myself
and closing the book
and getting
sick of the sea
and the sky
blue blue blue
spots of white,
all dizzy in the trap,
wanting out
but knowing
I was nailed
like sand-fleas
I slapped at,
and Mr. Faulkner
laying on his side
immortal and burning
with my toes
and everything tilting
and not quite
true.
Sloan Bashinsky
A time came in my life, I didn't know it yet, but it was time to die; it was time to become someone else; and so it began. It was not like anything I had read by the great writers, nor heard told by anyone I knew. Although there were some parallels in the Bible, the way it went for me seemed to either turn off or freak out the Bible people, and the non-Bible people. It was simply not believable, or it was the work of the Devil, but if it was the work of the Devil, why'd it keep standing me before mirrors, looking at ... me? Why'd it keep killing me, not usually softly? Why's it still doing it, 26 years later? I read Mr. Faulkner, he didn't get inside of me. Mr. Hemingway got inside of me, but then I was a fisherman, so there's that excuse. Mr. Vonnegut got inside of me, how could he not? Mr. Robbins got inside of me, I was defenseless. Yet, they were just beachhead softeners compared to the Normandy invasion.
Poetic Outlaws
THE AMERICAN WAY
Gregory Corso
I am a great American
I am almost nationalistic about it!
I love America like a madness!
But I am afraid to return to America
I'm even afraid to go into the American Express—
They are frankensteining Christ in America
in their Sunday campaigns
They are putting the fear of Christ in America
under their tents in their Sunday campaigns
They are driving old ladies mad with Christ in America
They are televising the gift of healing and the fear of hell
in America under their tents in their Sunday
campaigns
They are leaving their tents and are bringing their Christ
to the stadiums of America in their Sunday
campaigns
They are asking for a full house an all get out
for their Christ in the stadiums of America
They are getting them in their Sunday and Saturday
campaigns
They are asking them to come forward and fall on their
knees
because they are all guilty and they are coming
forward
in guilt and are falling on their knees weeping their
guilt
begging to be saved O Lord O Lord in their Monday
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
and Sunday campaigns
It is a time in which no man is extremely wondrous
It is a time in which rock stupidity
outsteps the 5th Column as the sole enemy in America
It is a time in which ignorance is a good Ameri-cun
ignorance is excused only where it is so
it is not so in America
Man is not guilty Christ is not to be feared
I am telling you the American Way is a hideous monster
eating Christ making Him into Oreos and Dr. Pepper
the sacrament of its foul mouth
I am telling you the devil is impersonating Christ in America
America's educators & preachers are the mental-dictators
of false intelligence they will not allow America
to be smart
they will only allow death to make America smart
Educators & communicators are the lackeys of the
American Way
They enslave the minds of the young
and the young are willing slaves (but not for long)
because who is to doubt the American Way
is not the way?
The duty of these educators is no different
than the duty of a factory foreman
Replica production make all the young think alike
dress alike believe alike do alike
Togetherness this is the American Way
The few great educators in America are weak & helpless
They abide and so uphold the American Way
Wars have seen such men they who despised things about them
but did nothing and they are the most dangerous
Dangerous because their intelligence is not denied
and so give faith to the young
who rightfully believe in their intelligence
Smoke this cigarette doctors smoke this cigarette
and doctors know
Educators know but they dare not speak their know
The victory that is man is made sad in this fix
Youth can only know the victory of being born
all else is stemmed until death be the final victory
and a merciful one at that
If America falls it will be the blame of its educators
preachers communicators alike
America today is America's greatest threat
We are old when we are young
America is always new the world is always new
The meaning of the world is birth not death
Growth gone in the wrong direction
The true direction grows ever young
In this direction what grows grows old
A strange mistake a strange and sad mistake
for it has grown into an old thing
while all else around it is new
Rockets will not make it any younger—
And what made America decide to grow?
I do not know I can only hold it to the strangeness in man
And America has grown into the American Way—
To be young is to be ever purposeful limitless
To grow is to know limit purposelessness
Each age is a new age
How outrageous it is that something old and sad
from the pre-age incorporates each new age—
Do I say the Declaration of Independence is old?
Yes I say what was good for 1789 is not good for 1960
It was right and new to say all men were created equal
because it was a light then
But today it is tragic to say it
today it should be fact—
Man has been on earth a long time
One would think with his mania for growth
he would, by now, have outgrown such things as
constitutions manifestos codes commandments
that he could well live in the world without them
and know instinctively how to live and be
—for what is being but the facility to love?
Was not that the true goal of growth, love?
Was not that Christ?
But man is strange and grows where he will
and chalks it all up to Fate whatever be—
America rings with such strangeness
It has grown into something strange and
the American is good example of this mad growth
The boy man big baby meat
as though the womb were turned backwards
giving birth to an old man
The victory that is man does not allow man
to top off his empirical achievement with death
The Aztecs did it by yanking out young hearts
at the height of their power
The Americans are doing it by feeding their young to the
Way
For it was not the Spaniard who killed the Aztec
but the Aztec who killed the Aztec
Rome is proof Greece is proof all history is proof
Victory does not allow degeneracy
It will not be the Communists will kill America
no but America itself—
The American Way that sad mad process
is not run by any one man or organization
It is a monster born of itself existing of its self
The men who are employed by this monster
are employed unknowingly
They reside in the higher echelons of intelligence
They are the educators the psychiatrists the ministers
the writers the politicians the communicators
the rich the entertainment world
And some follow and sing the Way because they sincerely
believe it to be good
And some believe it holy and become minutemen in it
Some are in it simply to be in
And most are in it for gold
They do not see the Way as monster
They see it as the "Good Life"
What is the Way?
The Way was born out of the American Dream a
nightmare—
The state of Americans today compared to the Americans
of the 18th century proves the nightmare—
Not Franklin not Jefferson who speaks for America today
but strange red-necked men of industry
and the goofs of show business
Bizarre! Frightening! The Mickey Mouse sits on the throne
and Hollywood has a vast supply—
Could grammar school youth seriously look upon
a picture of George Washington and "Herman Borst"
the famous night club comedian together at Valley
Forge?
Old old and decadent gone the dignity
the American sun seems headed for the grave
O that youth might raise it anew
The future depends solely on the young
The future is the property of the young
What the young know the future will know
What they are and do the future will be and do
What has been done must not be done again
Will the American Way allow this?
No.
I see in every American Express
and in every army center in Europe
I see the same face the same sound of voice
the same clothes the same walk
I see mothers & fathers no
difference among them
Replicas
They not only speak and walk and think alike
they have the same face
What did this monstrous thing?
What regiments a people so?
How strange is nature's play on America
Surely were Lincoln alive today
he could never be voted President not with his
looks—
Indeed Americans are babies all in the embrace
of Mama Way
Did not Ike, when he visited the American Embassy in
Paris a year ago, say to the staff—"Everything is fine, just drink
Coca Cola, and everything will be all right."
This is true, and is on record
Did not American advertising call for TOGETHERNESS?
not orgiasticly like today's call
nor as means to stem violence
This is true, and is on record.
Are not the army centers in Europe ghettos?
They are, and O how sad how lost!
The PX newsstands are filled with comic books
The army movies are always Doris Day
What makes a people huddle so?
Why can't they be universal?
Who has smelled them so?
This is serious! I do not mock or hate this
I can only sense some mad vast conspiracy!
Helplessness is all it is!
They are caught in the Way—
And those who seek to get out of the Way
can not
The Beats are good example of this
They forsake the Way's habits
and acquire for themselves their own habits
And they become as distinct and regimented and lost
as the main flow
because the Way has many outlets
like a snake of many tentacles—
There is no getting out of the Way
The only way out is the death of the Way
And what will kill the Way but a new consciousness
Something great and new and wonderful must happen
to free man from this beast
It is a beast we can not see or even understand
For it be the condition of our minds
God how close to science fiction it all seems
As if some power from another planet
incorporated itself in the minds of us all
It could well be
For as I live I swear America does not seem like America
to me
Americans are a great people
I ask for some great and wondrous event
that will free them from the Way
and make them a glorious purposeful people once
again
I do not know if that event is due deserved
or even possible
I can only hold that man is the victory of life
And I hold firm to American man
I see standing on the skin of the Way
America to be as proud and victorious as St.
Michael on the neck of the fallen Lucifer—
Sloan Bashinsky
I am an American, who actually lives, breathes and sleeps where the Devil is mistaken for the Christ, much to the Devil's great delight.
When I look at photos and video coverage of the Jan 6, 2020 assault on and inside the national Capitol, and at photos of Trump rallies, I see oceans of white faces. In the law is the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, which is Latin for, The thing speaks for itself. Another saying is, a picture is worth a thousand words. I am pretty sure that when Trump railed about the 2020 election being rigged, and then being stolen from him, his legions understood he meant, by American Blacks.
I live in Alabama, where more than half of ordinary Americans genuinely think God is on their and Donald Trump's side and the Devil is on the Democrats' side. I used to live in Florida, and I am pretty sure more than half of the ordinary people in Florida believe the same, and about half of them prefer Ron DeSantis over Trump, and the other half are certain Trump made America Great Again.
I'm an Independent, and am not all that impressed with Biden and the left, but they don't wave Bibles and claim God is on their side, and they don't remind me of Germany in the 1930s and later, nor of Russia back then, or now.
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/01/06/1070610129/photos-one-year-later-a-look-back-on-the-jan-6-insurrection?fbclid=IwAR0j-ZvNltZTMumFAPQeEEHMKp3pFqpC4UHeJ0-zd_ZrRQCnCdZLFWQsJis
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
