What made me into a poet

[revolutionR]

as I think back that after those psychedelic
years, as a teenager, somewhere into 69'
my life became consumed with having
to find a way to stay out of the military draft
I was going to jr. collage in 69'
when I got a letter to go to a draft physical
I sent them the letter back and said I could
not show up for some reason, so from that time
on my whole young life became a strange journey
to find a way to not be drafted, to make a long
story straight, and after being arrested by FBI agents
for draft evasion, I finally got out of it

and when I finally got out of it I was a poet
I now believe it was poetry that helped me
to get through those years without totally
losing my mind, but coming out on the other
side of that was like fighting a war to not
be forced to train and go fight in a real war
all that time I was reading and writing poetry
once when I went to a physical in Oakland
I had a copy of Philip Lamantia's poems
on me, I went into a crazy mode
and they would not process me
that was one of the three counts of draft evasion
I was charged with, the day I got my 4F classification
and I walked out of the draft center
I felt like I was walking on clouds literally
all the shit I had to go through to not be drafted
and maybe be sent off to Vietnam
I was a poet not a trained killer cannon fodder

but then what I had to do forced me down a certain path
which I will never know what it would have been like
if I had a low number in the draft lottery
and had not had to go through all that
but at the least I never had to shot people
what the hell were they over there for anyway
shipping heroin back in body bags