I did not become a poet to be a people pleaser

[revolutionR]

I am a product of society but I sensed at a very early age
that I was being programed to think a certain way
this did not sit well with me, I was a natural rebel
I resented being told what and how to think
I would have liked to be shown how to think critically
how to question the things I am being told
this is what a real education would be
but right off the bat I was scolded
for being different by my first grate teacher
and I never forgot it, my catholic upbringing
such as it was did not really teach me much
I think the good parts are just common sense
I think we are born with, until they brainwash us
and from the moment we are born that is their plan

as I keep stating I became a poet because I had the draft
hanging over me,maybe I would have became a poet anyway
but the fact that I had to go through contortions to not be
drafted, because I was against the Vietnam war
and I just did not like the thought that I would be trained to kill
it always goes back to my upbringing, and how I felt at odds
with how I was being programed to think, I rejected the
thought control, which I felt was not education
but just preparing me to be just another cog in the machine

I am a poet first and foremost to reveal the hypocrisy of the system
not to revel in it, not to ever forget that my first grade teacher
was teaching me to think white people were better then
colored people, or that some people were chosen

trying to make my little mind to be like all the other kids
force my round peg into the square hole, that is why beatniks
called these people squares, and why they said to dig it
it means to dig deep into what we are being lead to believe
and ask why we are being lead to conclusions, when it should
always be an open ended question, this is why poets write poems
and artists paint paintings, or not then do you think
it's just to have pretty pictures on a wall, or nice words on a page

when they said tell it like it is, they did not mean ignore the obvious
and try to go around it, poetry is its own person, you are just writing
it, and as long as there is evil going in the name of good, poetry will
pick it up, but that is not all poetry picks us, it still remembers
when this planet was a paradise, when the water was pure
and the skies clear, and the rocks spoke to us, and the animals too

I want to write about all the wonderful things in the universe
but there is all that religion and all that politics out there
and as soon as I begin to type my mind bleeds and I remember the
starving people in France, as my grandmother use to say
when I did not eat my bread crusts, " oh the starving people in France"

[Arcadia]

Thinking about the poem´s title: I´m sure most people could change "poet" for whatever they do... and still say the same..! . Inner perception of oneself is a whole trip...! Maybe we (humans?) tend to be rebellious at heart far beyond /despite the sometimes - let´s call it- objective facts..!
Gracias for the poem, r-rabbit!!

[revolutionR]

Thank you for the thoughtful response Arcadia, nothing has changed in my short life, I still feel like I did when I was a child, and then when I was a teenager, and one day when I was fifteen, I had a feeling that America was being taken down a bad road, I say that it happened one day, but it was one day when it sort of crystalised. I really started writing poetry when I was nineteen, I was not a university poet, I did not get the credentials, so my chances of ever being published by some periodical or book publisher was not happening.I did get a few poems published in a local alternate newspaper early on, but I had to self publish my poetic novel, that nobody knows about. Anyway I have no idea how many poems I have put on the internet. I can't find any sites to write on anymore, I like the format of this site.

[Arcadia]

So good you post here, poet friend!!!

Do you still have books of your novel ready to be bought online? Please, send a link to that, if so! I want to buy one for myself and the other one to be sent inside the USA. I have more time to read in summer and my government is now in a pro importation of whatever moment , so I guess I can purchase again books beyond the borders!

[revolutionR]

It is very strange for me to say this, but even though the book I self published is still on Amazom, I have to say that unless you were a hippie teenager in California in the late sixties that took LSD a lot of times, the content of the novel would probably not be relevant to you. Or maybe if you are researching about that period for some reason and and or have an interest in the history of that period and or about LSD. The novel as I call it, is really a series of story lines about my experiences when I was seventeen ,eighteen that uses a surreal style to explore my state of mind, so there is story line and a lot of poetic prose almost like a movie
that uses some animation. I wrote it after writing poetry for many years, and I decided that
I could write about my memories when I was experiencing all that in the late sixties, because
at the time I wrote it, I thought that there would be people who would want to read about
a teenagers LSD experiences in that period, but I think now that I wrote the book twenty years too late, The world has changed too much, if I had written the book before computers
and gotten it published by a publisher then maybe it would have taken off. As it is I did not how to promote it, but also because it is such an off the wall subject, and it was written by a poet and not a novelist. In other words I did not rewrite it over and over, or have anyone tell me what to change. It was very experimental, but it really does capture some essence of that very wild brief period, when LSD suddenly became easy to get right after it was made illegal. So I don't recommend it, there are a lot of flaws in that little work, but there is some really cool writing too. But like I said unless you were a hippie teenager in the late sixties, and maybe even if you were, because you would also have to like surrealism and psychedelic put together, with a kind of Burroughs influence tossed in and last bit not least Fear and Loathing in Las Vagas. So no please don't read it. You can dig the cover art by going on Amazon and typing Gone Hallucinogen Freeway.

[Arcadia]

I have to say that unless you were a hippie teenager in California in the late sixties that took LSD a lot of times, the content of the novel would probably not be relevant to you.

except it was my former forgotten encarnation, of course I wasn´t that in the sixties...!

and for the rest it was the most unusual reading disclaimer I had ever read...!!! gracias for taking the time to writing it r-rabbit!!!!!!

[revolutionR]

Unusual, is my writing style...