Identity Crisis
[I'll write more about last night's amazing poetry event at Cleveland's Literary Cafe in the near future, after I get caught up on a few other things. For now, I'd just like to share a poem I debuted there. Namaste....]
Jesus Crisis, Thursday 14 August 2008 at the Literary Cafe
Identity Crisis
I don't want to be anyone but me
Man
Really
I just want to be all I can be
Until I can't be
Know more
A pure and enduring shooting star
Until it's time to say sayonara
Ka-pow
And ciao
I don't want to be King or Prince
But in another way I do
Since I have a Washington Monument
Full of dreams
Musical schemes
And I know very well
What it's like When Doves Cry
But I don't have a clue how to answer
The Question of U
(I'm pointing to myself here, too)
And I wonder why it's vice versa
Instead of versa vice
I want to be from the country
And I want to be from town
I want to be the Nowhere Man who
Wherever you go
You find around
I don't want to be Allen Ginsberg
Except when I'm Beat up
Which is most of the time anymore
Though I don't really believe
In time anymore
And belief in time is such a chore
When Corso Kerouac Cassidy and Burroughs
Are my constant companions
But at times I get terribly tired of feeling Beat
When I'm On the Road less than I'm on the commode
I want to go Furthur than Kesey
But I don't want the cuckoo's nest
And I know why the caged bird sings
Though I'm not sure about the rest
Maybe the birds and their songs
And our rights and our wrongs
Are all Maya
In a multitude of hues
The colors run through me
Like a rainbow in an oil slick on an Elyria street
Running through the halls of Marion Correctional Institution
On the eve of the new Millennium
While I watched the 2000 fireworks across the world
From my cell
On PBS all night long
And I wonder
How it's possible I've never been freer
Never been more of a seer than there
And I want to be that free here
Find perfect vision outside of prison
Like it was in the years before and after Bush
In between the ears before and after religion
Tradition
Convention
Ambition
Subtraction and long division
Before and after I was a Skyline Pigeon
With no clue who I was
Or who you were
Or who we are
Maybe I do want to be Ginsberg
Or Kerouac
Coleridge or Kant
Byron
Christ
St. John of the Cross
d.a. levy
Lennon
Martin Luther King, Jr
King Tut
The kid in the cheap seats eating Junior mints
Wishing he were purple like Prince
Or green like the US Mince
Finally infatuated with the friendship of Peppermint Patty
And earning the love of Lucy
And Desi and the little red-haired girl
And Fred and Ethel Mertz
And Pigpen Jerry Garcia
Che Guevara Citizen Kane
And Linus without the line
Or the lie
I don't want to live in vain
I want to be like Steven B. Smith
Michael Salinger
A .44 Magnum
Not just a Derringer
Johnny Cash, Johnny Carson, Gary Larsen
Tearing down Bergen-Belsen, Washington DC
Garfield and Odie, O.D., and Oh Die
I want to give Peace a chance
But be able to accept that War
Is her partner in the cosmic dance
Accept that both are lies
That nothing in the universe is left to chance
And yet in another sense everything is
And "there's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so"
But what do I know
I want to be Dostoevsky without the crime
And especially without the punishment
Have freedom without the army and the government
And I'd sometimes like to choose
The Karamazov I prefer
And refuse the others
Pretending one brother is better than another
But I know all too well
That we're all all-four Karamazovs
We're all Kazantzakis,
Who said "the doors to heaven and hell
Are adjacent and identical"
And I think they might be the same door
There might be only one door
We all look at it like blind men looking at an elephant
One grabs the trunk and calls it snake
One grabs the leg and calls it pillar that will not break
One grabs only a whiff of the tail end
And calls it P.U.
But what is that elephant
Man
Really
With the incredible memory
It's Steven B. Smith
And the firth of fifth
It's Ray McNiece and Tolstoy's War and Peace
It's Donald, Dianne, dreams desire denial demerol
The doomed and the Divine
It's juiced up Roger Clemens saying
Look Babe I didn't share my cigar
With Jose Canseco or Andy Pettite
It's the heavy and the petty
Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt and Mario Andretti
Racing toward the grave
Slaves of the thrill and the almighty dollar
Kerouac Corso Ginsberg and Burroughs
Delivering us from literary squalor
Bush and Cheney making us holler
Whitman and Dickinson
Clinton and Monica
Dylan with his harmonica
Clapton and Hendrix with their guitars
Jay Leno with his classic cars
Venus and Mars and Pluto
A big black hole
And a supernova
And so unimaginably much more
I don't want to be any of it
Man
Really
I don't want to be Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
John McPain
Cheech and Chong
Kennedy Nixon
Mason Dixon
K-Fed, A-Rod, Brangelina, Britney or Bono
Or do I
I just want to be me
But what is this "me" anyway
What am I
Man
Really
I don't want to be Kipling,
Shere Khan Genghis Khan
An ex-con
The naked Nagasaki bomb bleached Japanese child
The so called whore in the so called Nazi Joy Division
Or the so called Not-See in her
I don't want to be the caged bird
But I want to sing
And I want everyone to listen to my whistling and chirping
Until everyone's bending
And maybe only pretending to listen
Which is probably all they were ever doing in the first place
Bending
Pretending to hear
Man
Really
And me too
Though I try like the Devil not to
I pretend to listen and then wonder what I'm missing
Maybe the whole shebang is a lie
Mighty Maya,
Caged birds, songs and all
Because how free can we really be
Man
Really
How free in the land of the penny pinch
And the US Mince
And poetry turned know-it tree
Or no-it tree
It's all bleeding like a sappy lie
Sticky sweet
Through the crimson streets
And in our futile funk
We tap the trunk
Try very hard to refine or define the goo
Yet it's totally true, too
All too real
And there's nothing more real in this whole ordeal
We call the universe
It's all illusion
It's all allusion
And it's all there is
Kurt Cobain said "All in all is all we are"
But he did not believe it
Said the gun
And if there's no fun in the pretense
If there's no joi in the vivre
Then we might as well leave
And maybe someone who sticks around will be happier.
I want to be Faithwalker
And sight walker
Oblivious to and aware of every hurdle
I want to be Theresa Göttl
Stretching the window from out of the desert
To be like Hansel and Gretel
Eating their gingerbread house
And being tasted and tested but not consumed
To impress all the chaps
And even perfect bound books
Like Larry Smith and Mark Kuhar
But be the Top Dog
Deeper than Cleveland
Like a Jim Thome homer back in the day
Finding its way to the bottom of Lake Erie
And beyond
To be professors like Howard Ellis, Timothy Leary
John McKenna, Helen Shepard
And the Good Shepherd
The innocent shepherd boy blue
With the sheep in the meadow and the cow in the corn
And a Satchmo horn that I can blow like Miles
And a free pass to get me through
The most expensive turnstiles
And the aisles and aisles and miles
Of poetry in your eyes
I want to be like my wife Geri Lynne
Like my mom again
Like my grandchildren
Like my dad
Like my dear old granddad
But without the nasty Nazi tattoo on his hand
I want to maintain a bad boy image
Without having anyone mistake me for bad
To keep them from messing with me
Without keeping them in fear
And maybe then I won't be so sad
Around here
I want to have a certain semblance of madness
To infuse and inspire my art
But I don't want people to take me too seriously
When I appear to fall apart
Or think I'm really mad except in the most brilliant of ways
And I guess that what I want most these days
Is out of this daze I've been in
Since God-knows-who knows when
I'd like to be able to start again
I want to know who I actually am
And to be it
I want folks to see it
Man
Really see it
And not judge it and hopefully love it
And be what they are and love it
And I'll love it too
You know there's a part of me that thinks I'm really you
And yes, you're really me
And if we could just open our egotistical eyes and see it
We could love
Man
Really
And maybe love would be all we need after all
And I don't think things would get too terribly boring
With all this love and no warring
As long as we didn't all live forever
And overpopulate the earth
To the point that we suck her dry and
Destroy our chances of living at all
But we're doing that already anyway
And I wonder if our birth and being
Really complement the earth we're seeing
Or condemn it
And while we're feeling up the elephant in the room
Blind as bats and batty as Babe Ruth
We mistake the lie for truth and truth for lie
We swallow maxims like an eye for an eye
And wonder why we can't see
Maybe there is nothing real or untrue
But thinking makes it me
And makes it you
I suspect I know all too well
That we're all Karamazovs
In handwritten Russian heavens and hells
Nabokovs
Molotovs
Kerouacs jacking off
We're all Mandela and Frederick Douglass and Crazy Horse
Stephen Biko and the Velvet Underground and Nico
Zorba the Greek and Nikos Kazantzakis
Who said in The Last Temptation of Christ that
"The doors to heaven and hell
Are adjacent and identical"
I'm willing to bet my chances at either-or
That they might just be the same door
That there might be only one door after all
And we're all pretending to see it
Like blind men looking at an elephant
One grabs the trunk and calls it a snake
One grabs the leg and calls it a pillar that will not break
One grabs only a whiff of the tail end
And calls it P.U.
But we fail to see it be you
And be me as much as it be him or her
Or B.M.
And all in all is all we are
Like Kurt Cobain said before he blew off his head
All in all is all we are
Despite our poetry
Or know-itry or no-itry
And one day we will know it
See
And if Kurt didn't really believe it all before
He said ciao and ka-pow
He does now.
I'm sure Smith's honored to be mentioned in the poem. Tho I'm understandably biased, I think it's a mighty fine piece.
I especially like those oil stains on Elyria Street.
RE "who am I" - I think we can build our minds & identities via writing. Who am I can be a process of the work you do - the work you do actually works on YOU.
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Thank you very much, Lady!
That's a big part of what I used to do with my writing, and what I'm starting to do with it again - even when I'm not necessarily aware that I'm doing it.
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In prison about a decade ago I wrote a song with this line in it:
"Creativity is therapy to me." But my perfectionism got me away from that for a while.
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I actually like this one read ...I mean reading it written..... a lot of nuances come out in the reading of it...
A fine piece.... Though I can bet you'll get flack for who is or isn't included in it...
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Thanks, Chris! I plan to do a video of it when I have time, because it's meant to be read aloud and I believe that seeing and hearing it gives it an even greater depth....
I will be back to respond to everyone's comments (for which I'm very grateful). I'm on my way out the door to run can't-wait errands; but I'm responding to you first because I'd like to address the issue of who is or isn't included. I could have gone on even longer and named more names, and I was tempted for a moment to do that, so no one felt left out. But I guess part of the whole point of the piece is that we're ALL left out to the degree that we leave ourselves out - but that at the same time in reality NO ONE is left out. Named or not, EVERYONE is part of this piece. Everyone's included. And those who might think otherwise (or those who think the named are either more or less important that the unnamed) "fail to see it be you / And be me as much as it be him or her / Or B.M. // And all in all is all we are."
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Darn it John. I think you might have pissed off the minister.
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I hope not. But I guess it beats pissing ON someone... lol.
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JC, I am honored beyond words to be mentioned in such a beautiful and epic poem. Thank you! It is a great poem-- it "Howls"!-- and I agree with Chris, it's a poem that needs to be lingered over and delved into (so thanks much for posting it here). Your performance was really good last night, and I'm looking forward to hearing this poem read aloud again (your reading Saturday, perhaps?) Congratulations on your debut of "Identity Crisis", and bravo!
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Did I just say that your performance was "good"? Duh... it was incredible!
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Thanks, Dianne!
I enjoyed yours last night as well.
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Hey John, I don't know what you're doing with your music but I think that's where you should be focusing. It's just my opinion, that being not much of an intellectual but very much a consumer of music. For me, this would be more powerful if it were a song. That's not to say that it's not powerful as it is. It's just that this type of poetry is difficult for me to digest but incredibly easy to fall in love with, given the right rhythm or beat or whatever makes it music. You're so talented. If your work was more available, in music form, I can see you having a nice size audience. But didn't you mention that you were going to release a CD soon? What's happening with that?
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Thanks, Terese! I am still working on music - and the CD is still in the works, though I've been neglecting it a bit. Just wrote a new song for it this week, actually.... Probably as winter approaches I will hunker down and try to finish it.
Funny, but I hear almost every poem I write as a song of sorts. This one is no exception.
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kind of a ginsberg rant
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On 2nd reading it's even better. Reminds me a bit of my poem Advancing on Satori. I'll have to send it to you on fb. I'm impressed Jesus. Hey I was looking for a link to share this piece and can't find it. Well, later. Check you at fb.
Thanks for a good read with humor rhythm and beat.
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Thanks, Joy!
I believe there's a "Share This" link for this blog on my Facebook page, though I have yet to figure out how to set one up on this site.
I'd love to check out your poem. Like the title already....
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As already stated by others...very "beat"-like and very song-like...
Once again, I really liked reading it...hope to hear it in the future
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Thanks, T.M.! I seriously considered reading it at Borders last week; but there were so many folks wanting to read and I didn't want to hog such a big chunk of time. I've also considered doing it at The Poet's Haven next Saturday - but I'm pretty sure it's too long for a podcast. So I'll play it by ear, and when the right time comes, it will spring forth, for better or worse... lol.
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I can edit the podcast as necessary...
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Cool!
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Hey Crisis,
I've commented...at considerable length , on your last two blogs and got a frikkin' ERROR message...hope this gets thru!
I do believe ou resident poet, that you hav, in one poem...peeclyummdu our eire generation's period in history.
Amazing...
HUgs,
Suze
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This one is so amazingly YOU!! Yes, it could be an opera, or a musical. But as it stands it is just incredible and says so damn much that I am really will read it several times and want a copy if you could send it to me. This doesn't seem to print out in its entirety. I hope this comment gets posted because everyone is having problems today with posting.
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Thanks, Elena! I will be printing it out in a small chapbook as soon as time permits, and I'll make sure you get a copy.
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i'll be back after i've absorbed this a more, but for now, i'd like to leave this:
OK, let's try that in English this time!
Geez, something is messing up my replies to you?
Anyway, I said, I do believe our resident poet/thinker (you) has just summed up our entire generation's expriences and fears.
Powerful, true and hits home beautifully.
Hugs,
Suze
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Haha! Apparently there's been a ghost of sorts in the machine lately. Several folks have mentioned having problems when they've tried to post comments. I guess GoDaddy was GoingDaffy. But it seems better now
Thanks for your very kind words, Suzette! They mean a great deal to me.
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This is one of your best pieces. I just love this and want to read it again and look forward to the video.
On New Year's eve in 2000 I was standing on a bridge in Paris looking at the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. That was a monumental moment for me. So different from the one you experienced during the same event.
Life is so full of mystery, wonderment, sadness, joy, disappointments, etc. You never know what you're gonna get from one moment to the next.
You have such a gift. Actually, you have many of them. I know you will use them well.
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Thank you very, very much, Susan!
I saw those very same Parisian fireworks! But I think I would have preferred your vantage point... lol.
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wow. i bet this read well out loud. incredible list of cultural names. proud to be one of them, sez steven b. smith.
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You're one of the best of the bunch... of any bunch.
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Very excellent write! To music and live on vid will give it further depth as you mentioned..
~HU
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Thanks, HU!
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well I just got through reading your genious in that poem identity crisis...
I wanted to highlight so many lines in it...
a work of Beat wonderment!
you are mad...
amazingly mad...
beautifully mad...
your poem was the maddest!
I want to be Dostoyevsky too!
Can we both be him?
and your Road is paved with the world , man...
you see it all there
you speaketh the truth, daddy...
don't stop!!!!!!!!!!!
Love,
Angel
Posted by Angel on August 18, 2008 - Monday
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Yes, we can both be him!
And thank you for your kind words, my friend.
I believe you've made me blush.
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John, I liked this very much. I think it is a true self portrait of your inner feelings.I think we all can relate in one way or another to these emotions. Love ya!Linda
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Thanks, Linda! I very much appreciate your comment.
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"Identity Crisis" starts out episode 8 of the podcast:
http://www.myspace.com/poetshavenpodcast
Okay, John, I'm done spamming your comments.
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This kind of spam is all right with me!
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good stuff!! wonderful credo poem. Mine is entitled "Donut Shop Poem" and it's last stanza is:
And I want my words
to smell like cheap perfume
that lingers in your nostrils
for days.
And I want my poem
to walk away
oh-s0-nice
after its left
lipstick stains
all over
your mind."
Take care my friend,
Howard Tessler
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Thank you very much, Howard! It's a pleasure to meet you. And I look forward to reading more of your work, including the rest of this clever poem.
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this must have been knock down drag out super read in person, John. it has all the parts for post-beat, beat or one heck of a treat. poems like this don't come along too often I feel blessed that I got to read it. and I will again.
thanks tons for your poem here, Donnie
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Wow - thanks for such a groovy comment, Donnie!
Much appreciated....
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i am honored,, not so much because my names is mentioned, but that it is mentioned in such an outrageous, courageous, tour de force of a poem. i thank you.
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Thanks for the inspiration, Markk, and for all your invaluable contributions to poetry and our world. I almost submitted this to you at Deep Cleveland when I wrote it, but I was afraid you wouldn't like it or think it was any good.
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