"

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

"

I Am Waiting

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

matualication:

I would like
to be born
in every country,
have a passport
for them all
to throw
all foreign offices
into panic,
be every fish
in every ocean
and every dog
in the streets of the world.
I don’t want to bow down
before any idols
or play at being
a Russian Orthodox church hippie,
but I would like to plunge
deep into Lake Baikal
and surface snorting
somewhere,
why not in the Mississippi?
In my damned beloved universe
I would like
to be a lonely weed,
but not a delicate Narcissus
kissing his own mug
in the mirror.
I would like to be
any of God’s creatures
right down to the last mangy hyena-
but never a tyrant
or even the cat of a tyrant.
I would like to be
reincarnated as a man
in any image:
a victim of prison tortures,
a homeless child in the slums of Hong Kong,
a living skeleton in Bangladesh,
a holy beggar in Tibet,
a black in Cape Town,
but never
in the image of Rambo.
The only people whom I hate
are the hypocrites-
pickled hyenas
in heavy syrup.
I would like to lie
under the knives of all the surgeons in the world,
be hunchbacked, blind,
suffer all kinds of diseases,
wounds and scars,
be a victim of war,
or a sweeper of cigarette butts,
just so a filthy microbe of superiority
doesn’t creep inside.
I would not like to be in the elite,
nor, of course,
in the cowardly herd,
nor be a guard dog of that herd,
nor a shepherd,
sheltered by that herd.
And I would like happiness,
but not at the expense of the unhappy,
and I would like freedom,
but not at the expense of the unfree.
I would like to love
all the women in the world,
and I would like to be a woman, too-
just once…
Men have been diminished
by Mother Nature.
Why couldn’t we give motherhood
to men?
If an innocent child
stirred
below his heart,
man would probably
not be so cruel.
I would like to be man’s daily bread-
say,
a cup of rice
for a Vietnamese woman in mourning,
cheap wine
in a Neapolitan workers’ trattoria,
or a tiny tube of cheese
in orbit round the moon.
Let them eat me,
let them drink me,
only let my death
be of some use.
I would like to belong to all times,
shock all history so much
that it would be amazed
what a smart aleck I was.
I would like to bring Nefertiti
to Pushkin in a troika.
I would like to increase
the space of a moment
a hundredfold,
so that in the same moment
I could drink vodka with fishermen in Siberia
and sit together with Homer,
Dante,
Shakespeare,
and Tolstoy,
drinking anything,
except, of course,
Coca-Cola,
-dance to the tom-toms in the Congo,
-strike at Renault,
-chase a ball with Brazilian boys
at Copacabana Beach.
I would like to know every language,
like the secret waters under the earth,
and do all kinds of work at once.
I would make sure
that one Yevtushenko was merely a poet,
the second-an underground fighter
somewhere,
I couldn’t say where
for security reasons,
the third-a student at Berkeley,
the fourth-a jolly Georgian drinker,
and the fifth-
maybe a teacher of Eskimo children in Alaska,
the sixth-
a young president,
somewhere, say, modestly speaking, in Sierra Leone,
the seventh-
would still be shaking a rattle in his stroller,
and the tenth…
the hundredth…
the millionth…
For me it’s not enough to be myself,
let me be everyone!
Every creature
usually has a double,
but God was stingy
with the carbon paper,
and in his Paradise Publishing Corporation
made a unique copy of me.
But I shall muddle up
all God’s cards-
I shall confound God!
I shall be in a thousand copies to the end of my days,
so that the earth buzzes with me,
and computers go berserk
in the world census of me.
I would like to fight on all your barricades,
humanity,
dying each night
like an exhausted moon,
and resurrecting each morning
like a newborn sun,
with an immortal soft spot-fontanel-
on my head.
And when I die,
a smart-aleck Siberian Francois Villon,
do not lay me in the earth
of France
or Italy,
but in our Russian, Siberian earth,
on a still-green hill,
where I first felt
that I was
everyone.

—Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Sister, brother, comrade,

Why can I not call you these names?

Why, Sir?, Ma’am?

Doctor?, Professor?,

Why can we not join these hands?

Your honor?, Mr. President?,

Why the smoke and mirrors?

Why the hierarchy?

Father? Mother?

Are we not walking on the same road?

Murphy - A Quarterlife Crisis in Brooklyn

matualication:

So this audio file is the poem I worked on yesterday.. might do some more tweaking to it.. sorry my voice records like shit. It’s about a 6 minute piece.

Tu corazón,

que frío

When you turn the corner

And you run into yourself

Then you know that you have turned

All the corners that are left.

Langston Hughes

matualication:

How humble,

the existence of extra buttons

who live in waiting behind the

right hand flap of my flannel shirt.

They don’t ask any questions

or hold any lofty aspirations.

They may be called upon one day,

and that would be fine.

They don’t dream to be any more than they are

nor long to be remembered.

They’ve been around for years and were just noticed for the first time.

and they’re okay with that,

being noticed, I mean, though they wouldn’t mind

to be forgotten.

What would they mind?

Nothing, I suppose.

They haven’t any mind,

the humble buttons behind my clothes.

"My heart is so small
it’s almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it?
“Look,” He answered,
“your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world."

Rumi  (via diveinme)

I feel gypped by dunces 
as if reality were the property 
of little men 
with luck and a headstart, 
and I sit in the cold 
wondering about purple flowers 
along a fence 
while the rest of them             
stack gold           
and Cadillacs and          
ladyfriends,          
I wonder about palmleaves           
and gravestones           
and the preciousness of a           
cocoon-like sleep;          
to be a lizard would be           
bad enough      
to be scalding in the sun          
would be bad enough           
but not so bad         
as being built up to           
Man-size and Man-life           
and not wanting the           
game, not wanting          
machineguns and towers and           
timeclocks,           
not wanting a carwash          
a toothpull      
a wristwatch, cufflinks           
a pocket radio          
tweezers and cotton           
a cabinet full of iodine,           
not wanting cocktail parties           
a front lawn           
sing-togethers        
new shoes, Christmas presents           
life insurance, Newsweek           
162 baseball games          
a vacation in Bermuda.         
not wanting not wanting,          
and I judge the purple flowers        
better off than I         
the lizard better off           
the dark green hose       
the ever grass          
the trees the birds,         
the cats dreaming in the butter          
sun are          
better off than          
I, getting into this old coat now         
feeling for my cigarettes           
car keys           
a roadmap back,           
going out           
down the walk           
like a man to be executed         
walking toward it     
surely,         
going into it          
without guards           
driving toward it           
racing at it         
70 miles per hour,         
jockeying         
cussing          
dropping ashes        
deadly ashes of every           
deadly thing         
burning,          
the caterpillar knows less          
horror          
the armies of ants are          
braver           
the kiss of a snake           
less ravenous,           
I only want the sky           
to burn me more and more           
burn me out           
so that the sun begins at           
6 in the morning           
and goes past midnight           
like a drunken door always open,           
I drive toward it           
not wanting it           
getting it getting it          
as the cat stretches 
yawns 
and rolls over into          
another dream.   

Henry Charles Bukowski     (HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HIM!)

Palahniuk put it nicely,
we are “the middle-children of history”
we were forgotten once Nietzsche
announced the death of god


And I can empathize with Tyler
about much else as well
like our consumeristic culture
and the ways it dulls the self


Yet I believe Zarathustra spoke
of that manufacturers flaw
the ego which hopelessly seeks
some sort of affirmation


“You great star,
what would your happiness be
had you not those
for whom you shine?”


Self improvement is not masturbation
it is a road leading to self worth


This generation of men raised by women
has been wandering too long with the mark of Caine
without direction, seeking guidance
having lost our fathers
having killed our brothers


When will we learn the advantage of our autonomy?
The truth that the overlooked offspring can tend their own wounds,
can plan their own paths
can answer their own inquiries.


In this way the middle-children discover how to live
without mother’s rules
without god’s instructions
but trusting the voice within themselves


In this way humanity’s evolving
men are becoming men
women becoming women
and all of us are becoming gods.

—Joshua Patrick Murphy, 2012

I wrote this poem while living in Bolivia. I don’t think much of it, but found it, forgotten, on my hard drive and realized that I had never shared it with anyone. So I figured I might as well post it here.</p