my poetic years

[revolutionR]

It wasn't long after I read Rimbaud in 70'
that my world began to turn inside out
where I lived poets walked the streets like ghosts
that means poetry was alive magic was alive
I spent my days in the library or book stores
I got on disability because they thought I was crazy
because I did not want to train to kill people in Nam
my crazy poet friend the surfer was also a zoo bag
we hung out at the Catalyst a cafe drinking establishment
where you could get a cup of thick black coffee
and sit and smoke cigars and talk to crazy people all day long
the poets and street philosophers would hang
with the university students

did i say there was poetry and magic in the air
yes there was, it was so thick you could cut it with a butter knife
that town was so full with magic that the gutter ran with poetry
there was so much magic that one day I thought I was Merlin
but the next day I was a poet again living in the saint George hotel
each day I would walk down Pacific avenue and see all the
crazy people let out of the mental homes, the street poets and people
all the homeless travelers and hippies, the old Mexican that would
stand on the corner like a statue and then suddenly move like a mime
I thought I could see him rearranging the universe out of the corner
of his eye, and I could see the universe in his eyes, and he would smile
as if he knew that I saw poetry in his eyes, and then he would
reach out to the birds, as all the people walked past on their way
to to where ever they were going, there were others like him
some standing on the curb talking to themselves
he never said a word but his being was poetry