Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

around the time I began to think of myself as a beatnik
the surfers were becoming the big thing
where I lived in Anaheim calif.
when I was thirteen surf music was happening

what I remember was there was some surfer lingo
they had a way to describe non surfers
like the word hodad, which was a non surfer
that hung out at the beach and tried to get
surfer girls, another one was gremmie
which was some cat trying to be a surfer

I was more into the beatnik simple way
of describing it, you were either a hep cat
or you were a square

I did not make it as a surfer, but I did try to be
cool, I wanted to be hep to the squares
and I knew the poets were cool

these days it seems that the squares still rule
but being hep and cool is not just affecting
an attitude, in other's words it is not so simple
so somebody the pretends to be cool
is not cool, but a square is always a square

and not all beatniks were poets, and a surfer
might be a poet, but just because you dabble
in poetry does not mean you are hep
and being hep does not mean you know some lingo
do you dig what I'm sayin, don't be a drag man
I'm hep to the bummers, and surf is up
I mean poetry is like riding a cool wave

so jazz is cool, but square dancing is for squares
a square thinks John Wayne won the war
a hep cat knows how to read between the lines
the word cool means that you know how to
keep things round, to cool things down

there is nothing cool about the being square
do you get my drift, do you see where I'm coming from
I don't need a vast sense of language to know
how all this plays out, but it certainly helps
to know where words come from

I mean if all you know is ugga bugga
then you might not know how to build a pyramid
but for some reason historians an scientists
still try to tell us that primitive people
only knew ugga bugga, and that is the most square
so it's the squares that try to tell us what to think
but it was the primitive beatniks with their bongos
that tried to tell us like it is, and it ain't what
the more square then square squares tell us
don't be hodad poet be a surfer poet, I mean
poetry is not a bystander art, no art is for bystanders
bystanders is for squares, but be hip to what is really
going on, if you are a poet then read the poets
or find the ones you resonate to, and surf their poems


keep it round man, keep it round, cuz what goes
around, comes around, and that ain't no hooey jive

I remember surfers,
images I've seen before
surfing was mouse clicking,
back on the great prairies and
ocean tubes of mind in new worlds
or old worlds lost in the galaxies
until one silent roar or another
brings it all back, ah the metal,
the shiny metal! obsessions for
the metal, the hunt with no
real feel for the diamond.

Strange how all thirteen of the
surviving hipsters do "midcentury
modern" lately as their religion,
but check back for updates
in accelerated time.

I remember the surfers,
or at least twanging guitars
of a musical entourage, and
as to hep or not, I can't say,
because I was never there.
Not really.

As a side note the person that influenced me to really be a poet
was a hard core surfer, he smoked a lot of pot to keep sane
he could not handle alcohol it make him too angry
he became a hard core surrealist, meaning he wrote
in a surrealist style, he was the one that gave me
Philip Lamantia's phone number, and all those years
I knew him he surfed, but near the end of his life
he became strangely uninformed, and tried to think
of himself as some kind of Hemingway, he watched boxing on TV
and he really lost the surrealist. I don't know what happened
to all his writing.

"you will never hear surf music again" Jimi Hendrix

Nice how it comes full circle.
Alcohol doesn't agree with some people,
and never has, jesus look at history.

Rik came from a rich family in L.A. his father was a scientist who worked
for some corporation, his father made him get shock therapy because Rik
was an acid head, the shock therapy I think was why he could not handle
alcohol,the pot really did keep him sane, sort of, but he read a lot of books
and could translate French and Spanish, I wanted to write a book about
my early poet days, and some of the things I went through with Rik. He
was a good poet, but he was a kind of tyrant, but he did act as a kind
of mentor to me, when I first was writing.

I'm too late. No one mentored
me about prosetry of the waves
when I was growing up, the first,
second or third wave, and by then
it was almost too late, and California
just sat there the whole time, out
there in the sun.

definitely keep it ROUND