the beat is alive

[revolutionrabbit]

but it lives in a sardine can
it remembers when a poet was a poet
which remembers when Blake said
what he said mind forged, yes the mind
was forged and placed in manacles
the beat still lives, but it's canned
the metaphor is good as before
bet we are losing the words
that once held some kind of awe
to make us see with what little light
we could kindle with our poetry

the beat that is the pulse that is the rhythm
that keep us alive to an awesome light of free words
that actually lit up our way, when having a copy
of Illuminations in our hip-pocket was all right
it was still an alright high, a right path to be on
it was not the decadence that we lived for
it was the light shed by those living pulsing lines
that kept vigil in our wild flower heads

now the light at the bottom of the age of reason
call it what you, the space-age, the computer age
the canned in a box of artificial realities, ( mind forged)
is all but extinguished, it is all but a mere flicker
that because there is so much more darkness
all around, appears like a blinding flash in the pan
everybody is either a poet now, ( like getting God
in the trenches) or they have all been heard by
the mad forged manacle herd that parade across
endless propaganda infotainments of the dead
burying the dead, (the media is so good at making
us believe)

the beat is still alive, the metaphor still holds
but our vision is canned on demand, and the
nature of the living word was once nurture
once existed in the ecstasy of all of natural life
before record time crumbled into judgments held by
mind split mankind forgeries

[Arcadia]

but it lives in a sardine can yeah, sometimes & sometimes not! Enjoyed the reading, gracias rrabit!

[revolutionrabbit]

i always think of sardine cans
one of my favorite poets
Bobby Kaufman's 'Golden Sardine'

[stilltrucking]

Thanks for the poem
can't think of a witty metaphor
maybe poets are the can openers of our souls?
just passing through

[revolutionrabbit]

Tom Waits says there is nothing like a can of beans and a camp fire.
you could add a can of sardines.

or a sardonic witty remark around the camp fire.

the metaphor holds, apparently you realize the irony or the butt of the joke.

a poet is a very general word to call people that write little witty sense/nonsense oriented lines of verse.

from there we up the ante, on how high you bet on the metaphor.

your soul will thank you.

(the garbage, the crime, the stench)

[hester_prynne]

Indeed I ride a sardine can literally twice a day to and from work. Everyone has a little TV screen in their hand and wires drooling out of their ears. Or they talk on phones.
I read Mindell's "Year one" global process work.

Enjoyed the read.
H

[stilltrucking]

A lame metaphor
Not much irony in my diet sorry
I am the fat lady in the front row.



Enjoyed your poem
thank you very much
sincerely
jt

[revolutionrabbit]

how can you enjoy the poem, if you still have to suck on it for the irony or the butt of the joke? It is true that a certain poem can seem different every time you read it.Or maybe depending on the moment it was written and or read.People argue over certain works, the meaning the poet meant to impart, if the poem survives.Then we have to suffer the suck of the critics, that is if you pay enough attention to the various schools of thought surrounding works of literature, art work, philosophy,ect.Take a poet like me, I have no credentials, I'm not famous, no play write, or journalist, or collage teacher, ect, I have no books to my name, no published anything, cept some stuff that got on Beatitudespoetry.com, and my little self published novel, that was a work of heart felt commitment.Is the irony lost on me? "takes me years sucking on the bones of a poem to get the irony"
really?

[stilltrucking]

Sorry I was editing it down
Yes it is true I have to suck the marrow from the bones to get the irony

Here is an example
Do you see the irony in this poem on first reading?
Took me years of reading it and reading it to catch it.

"Why do log truck drivers rise earlier than students of Zen" Gary Snyder"

[revolutionrabbit]

Hester, what made you think of the global process? Hey, i don't really like this poem, I mean I was trying to say something about how the media and all the contraptions seem to suck the meaning right out of poetry.It is not a pleasant thing to contemplate, but in order to fight back, you have to know your enemy.And if truth were told, a great deal of what passes for art or poetry, is hardly and threat to them.And what threat poetry, art, philosophy, remains, remains to be seen.In some sense the enemy is us, like Pogo said, but in a very real sense, we are talking about all the senses and the 6th one too.Poetry then, is much more then just eating glass.How is that for irony?

[revolutionrabbit]

well stilltrucking i can see how that particular line holds irony for you personally.Maybe not so much for a non truck driver.That is a certain kind of irony then, then there are others, in fact irony is a real bitch, but it seems to evolve with the territory.At any rate it is a very real component to the mystery that each nuance creates.Gary Snyder sees a great deal of real irony or maybe he sees beyond the ironic implications to the simple spectrum to the complex in the natural world, compared to the lack of irony in people who care not for the natural world.I guess Kerouac saw so much that his irony meter just could not bare another brunt.He was blunt, but he had that finger snappin ironic sense.

[stilltrucking]

If I told you I was color blind
If I said Wittgenstein's Blue Book was yellow
Could you relate to that?
Suppose I said I was tune deaf
tone deaf, beatless?

WHY LOG TRUCK DRIVERS RISE
EARLIER THAN STUDENTS OF ZEN
In the high seat, before dawn dark,
Polished hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging in Poorman creek.
Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.
----------------------------------------------
Gary Snyder - Turtle Island 1974

Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.
Took me years of reading that poem to finally hit on those last to lines.

After
A million miles in a sardine can
only the constant motion to keep me together
and blow away the stench of claustrophobia and dead rats and maggots
they are always with me like Sylvia's Bell Jar.


Now I get by with a poem
from a perfect stranger

Enjoyed the poem
it is always dying
and most would prefer it that way
they want it canned and on a shelf
uniformity and reasonable
except for a handfull of souls
who will not let us sink into the insanity of a perfectly rational world.
the beat goes on pounding rythm to even those who can't hear it and who are not grateful even.
even if their survival depends on it.

sorry about the ramble
I will probably edit this down after second thoughts

[revolutionrabbit]

grokin it.it has a beat.but i can't hear myself.

um, like man, when i was a teenager, i was afraid
that i could not say what i thought.and then i had
to learn the hard way, just what i was thinkin, i mean
man, i knew some thin was a happen in, but i could
not hear myself screamin in the inside, so i listened
to some them Beat poets, sayin stuff, like what it
is, like he cool, like make you stop in the middle
of a sentence, and hear that snap, not the crackle
pop one, the one that snaps you into another groove.
dig.

[still.trucking]

I was ten years before you
I was ten years behind you

I was a teenager in the fifties
I first noticed the "silent wind" > in the seventies
In the sixties I was in a coma
A walking catatonic
One step over the edge
I could walk and talk
but I never noticed
that I was a bitter old man


In 1970 I was thirty years old and could not climb a set of stairs without being in terror with the stench of death in my head. The hairs on the back of my neck bristling with the feeling. Then in 72 I put my head through a pure hit of window pane, and I started to notice. Been thirty years since my last trip and I am still noticing the changes.

That bit about the split mind, so true for me


Keep on keeping on
please.
and please pardon this ramble over your excelent poem that I will be reading many more times to come and hope it is in the book, or maybe your next one.
May you never have the problems of a mid list author. Or if you do I hope you will enjoy them as the PERQS of a job well done.

R. D. Laing was all the rage in the seventies, when me and everybody and their brother was getting saved. If not for Nietzsche and the L.S.D. I would a Jew for Jesus.

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. — R.D.L.

[saw]

enjoyed the conversation sparked by this piece, so I would have to say it worked......and jack, thanx for that r.d. laing quote...that's going on my wall & if I ever get drunk enough to get a tattoo, that first sentence will be it...."The range of what we think and do is limited
but what we fail to notice.".....amen brother....