THERE IS NO MYTH IN HIS LIFE

For 5 blocks he wonders how the elk got there. The only way into the city from the mountain is Interstate 90 so he guesses they took the commuter lane. Rode someone’s bumper all the way to town. Used their antlers as horns. When he spots them they’re grazing the green belt at the north end of the community college. His peripheral vision catches the sandy brown of elk hide against the row of poplar trees that buffers traffic noise. They’re chewing as if counting to 15 before swallowing. Everything else rushes by too fast to notice the care they’re taking. In fact by the time he stops at the traffic light just 5 blocks away he’s no longer sure he even saw elk.

ADVICE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF PUNKS

Be high Whitmans.

Be old maid Dickinsons.

Fear no gods.

Live with the fact you are singular souls left to ponder the cruel ironies of your existential existence. You are Sartre. You are Camus on a bad acid trip.

Learn the lessons of Walden Pond. Live off your friend’s land. Grow your own. Avoid your neighbors. Transcend accidentally.

Don’t think insurance salesmen can’t be great poets. Contractors of the imagination. Suited saints of the cubicles. Wallace Stevenses on the time clock can write too.

Ban the phrase “day job” from your vocabulary. Concentrate on the real work.

It’s stupid to write a 500-word essay about white chickens next to a red wheelbarrow.

Ignore the fact bumper stickers and sound bites are the new poetic yardsticks.

It you can’t say it in 3 minutes you need a good editor.

Point things out “directly, purely, concretely, no abstractions, no explanations.”

Agree “first thought, best thought.”

Read Blake, read Ginsberg.

Use a manual typewriter. Create spontaneous bop prose in all its beatific beauty.

Don’t end up old Bull Lees shooting heroin in Mexico City or pop cans in Kansas City.

Be Patti Smith holy, Jim Carroll pure, Lou Reed wise.

Remember: to just say no is to never know.

HAIKU #080

outside Eliot Hall --

empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans

a full moon

THIS  COUNTRY WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF WE ALL LISTENED TO ARTIS THE SPOONMAN

Man -- when he plays

beats his body claps

metal on bone like a splash

of cold water on the face

of America! His works

unbridled stash spread on dirt

stolen silverware from the bare

cupboards of America!

He builds a soul from the ground

up whips himself rips rhythms

from anime clay clogs

unshod shackled with gold

dances on gray cement among

pipes bent by development

rattles hunched but unbroken

shoots straight up electrons

of percussion fly from his body

this instrument of America!

Gives it to us direct measures out

our medicine spoon by spoon.

copyright 1997-2007 John Burgess