I need to make time to write. There is no question about it.
A writer should write, right?
Right.
Write.
As a reader I carry this burden of thousands of human trials, dilemmas, and troubles. The human condition is what I study. I read books; that's what I do. I read and then I analyze. I'm studying the human condition on a daily basis and it really is starting to conflict with my current status of being a human being. It's a harsh world out there, which I know because I've read so many accounts of it, but when's the last time something horrible happened to me? I'm not saying I wish something bad would happen to me, but is it odd that I have to spend so much of my time thinking about horrible things when I don't have to? Is that what it's like to just be an aware and intelligent person? Am I just ignoring the realities of my own life by jumping into other people's?
Here I am drawing a blank...
This is a poem I read this week for class by Leroi Jones (a beat poet of course):
"In Memory of Radio"
Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)
What can I say?
It is better to have loved and lost
Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?
Am I a sage or something?
Mandrake's hypnotic gesture of the week?
(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts...
I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!
I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight)
& love is an evil word.
Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?
An evol word. & besides
who understands it?
I certainly wouldn't like to go out on that kind of limb.
Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk.
At 11, Let's Pretend/&we did/& I, the poet, still do. Thank God!
What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe
& invisible & the unbelievers couldn't throw stones?) "Heh, heh, heh.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."
O, yes he does
O, yes he does
An evil word it is,
This Love.
Isn't that the best poem you've ever read? Doesn't that make you just want to jump out of your skin and run around telling everyone to read it? I know that doesn't make any sense but I just like it so much. I want to write like that and I want people to like it and read it and frame it and recite it when they're sad. Is that too much to ask? Probably since I haven't written anything. If I expect to be inspired into writing I need to read things like this much, much more and I plan on it. I'm taking a class on the Beats this semester and I think if I can focus enough it will be very helpful.
