we became surrealist

[revolutionrabbit]

How could I know
what it was like to
be a surrealist, in the 1920's?

I was looking for a word
in the middle of a book
that was nothing but words

the word if found, would be
the beginning of the thread of words
that would lead me through a weave
of infinite meanings, that only
meant something to me

the roller coaster awoke inside my pen
my crazy surfer poet friend came along
he waved his eyes around and showed me
the waves he was riding in Neptune's temple

the poet rides the roller coaster of delirious dawn
we would read the strange books in his wild looks
over night we became surrealist, he proclaimed
we would read everything that captured
our upheaval of imagination, we would drink the
darkest coffee in the cafe haunts as we burned
holes in the table with our acid stare, Huysmans
was there with his 'Down There', 'La- Bas'

everyday we would write the poems down
it was like being drunk on pure potion of clown
we would ride them down, toss our two cents
into the circle we played with our lost marbles
rolling them around like sacred dice blown on
by the poetic marvelous, no line was too mad
no word too weird, or too chancy, funny fancy

we were in the realms of the absolute absurd
we walked along the Coney island of the mind
exploring the discrete arcades of fortune tellers
between the dreams of languid lingering loners
and women poets who lured us to our dreams

as the teenage girl screams went on and on
up there in the jet star on dragon back tracks
we dripped obscure French novels in our aura
walking like arch poets along the cotton candy
crowds, with our head in the burning giraffe clouds

one day crazy surfer poet said, "there is no God"
as if it was an absolutely original poetic thought
And I wondered if a poet were God, what poem
but I "could not know what it was like, to be a
surrealist in the 1920's..."

[saw]

this is right on time for me, just read Gertrude Stein's book on Picasso, sounded very similar to you poem, what a time it must of been to be in Paris.....Woody Allen's Movie, Midnight in Paris, also gets into to those special times when everyone is tuned in.....could be New York or San Francisco.....any place where the winds of change are stirring the waters.....

[Kailashana]

It's interesting that every time is better than our own, which Woody's movie
conveyed in his own indomitable way.

We do, however, get to re-experience their lives via poetry, film, art, novels,
pictures, if only a glimpse-at-a-time.

The poem does justice to both then and now. That's an important art in and by itself.

~A