Drugs are a bet with your mind

My junior year of college I took an oral interpretation class....it was actually pretty awesome. Our teacher was a huge hippie and would begin each class with the Salute to the Sun yoga sequence. We had to recite a poem for the class and I chose this one by Jim Morrison from his "Wilderness" collection.

What are you doing here?
What do you want?
Is it music?
We can play music.
But you want more.
You want something & someone new.
Am I right?
Of course I am.
I know what you want.
You want ecstasy
Desire & dreams.
Things not exactly what they seem.
I lead you this way, he pulls that way.
I’m not singing to an imaginary girl.
I’m talking to you, my self.
Let’s recreate the world.
The palace of conception is burning.

Look. See it burn.
Bask in the warm hot coals.

You’re too young to be old.
You don’t need to be told
You want to see things as they are.
You know exactly what I do
Everything.

Sunday starts at Saturday's dusk

On the day his son was born, the astronomer screamed out the window: You! This! This thing that beats the inside of our hearts? Is a beautiful curse! Know this & fling it hard enough into the air to make new charts! Shortly afterwards the astronomer realized his newborn son, his wife, & the birth all were but hallucinations, so he sat with a pot of tea & became a trapeze artist instead.
by Anis Mojgani

I found you inside a book of stars called
Sunday Starts at Saturday’s Dusk.
It was turned to a page marked “For when.”
I crumpled up my spine and became a mouse.
You were a planet.
I was the one prayer spoken
in the short little life
of a dust mite
trying to be a sword
hoping to become a twig
a constellation
or at least an answer
to somebody’s question.
I was born in the year of the swan.
My arms
were born in the year of the fish–
a corner of me was something truly spectacular.
My tongue felt like truth.
I had trouble swallowing it.
Names came from legends.
Or legends from names–
I forgot the order.
My mother wrote the origins of myth
on the inside of underpants.
I walked pantless to become closer to what I was.
I set the wheelbarrow on fire
climbed inside
and looked for a hill to ride down.
I was at the bottom of one.
I pushed the barrow up it.
Halfway up it rained.
Cussing doesn’t come from a lack of vocabulary–
I know all the other words.
None of them speak the same language that my fucking heart does.

I knew You'd be good

FLOCKPRINTER

by Buddy Wakefield

Flockprinting is an aggressive electrostatic action
using severe heat to force finely chopped fibers
onto patterns of fabric
ultimately resulting in
soft touch.

When they told You that this was your assignment
You flockprinted straitjackets and suits of armor.
So I asked if you wanted to trade jobs
because damn, baby,
that
is poetry.

And yeah, these arms fell backwards
when ya did it
chest outstretched
open to the way you palms up turn me.

I knew You’d be good.
I just didn’t know how good.

Even before we met
when the assignment was to draw words
with their own literal meanings
I would write out each letter of the word LOVE
using winning halves of wishbones, melted Crayons
and the toe tips of the great dancers who’ve quit dancing
because I don’t give up on shit like that.
I always knew I’d find You.

Even before we met,
when the assignment was to partner up in ice water, and keep our heads above it
I’d watch boys with girls take the shallow end of the 8th grade
like
suckerfish
swapping skin deep aquarium air tubes
trying to make each others shivers fit.
We don’t swim that way.
Never gonna.

You have been a long time comin’
and the clouds have rolled You in slowly.
But I ain’t mad at the upshot sky.
Rain,
it’s my lucky number.
It’s the author of release.
It taught me monsters are easy to come by
so I went out and found the beast
before we met.
When the assignment was to incomplete myself
with sad songs and recycled insults,
when I was spun out eyes bagged teeth fist first in lust and considering Jesus,
You were there.
You have been the whole journey
and I ain’t got nothin’ against goin’ home
to You,
Flockprinter.

You look good in yer tidal wave,
toe-to-toe with the mean blue moon,
head raised up like a lighthouse.

You are buttercups spraying
out the mouths of doves,
fireworks stuck in the air.
You’re a freestanding landing pad held together by choir claps.
You’re a god
not afraid
to walk with the saviors
who ride monkeys around on their backs
kicking up mercury
spreading upward openly,
carrying breath.
Well.

You’re an18-stringed guitar heart sparkin’
off roots dancing out of the river’s edge.
You walk like a free country
with an affinity for thick skin.
You live
humming to the tune of let loose like a railway
banging through the middle of Novocain,
an open winded under water fire escape.

Flockprinter,
You have, now are, and always will be
my reflection of individuality
carried out by the acoustic drift
of a snowflake…
livin’ with a fingerprint.

And I
am rumble motion jawbone
waterlogged with ink spots
smiling ear to ear
armed with backbone and busted zoo gates
promising You
from the bottom of my harmonica pocket
forever,
You will never have another lonely holiday.

Even now,
where the assignment is to live without a destination,
I end up with You and the rain, released.
Both,
flockprinting stars
between me and the beast.

Music of the soul

Voltaire once described poetry as the music of the soul. Thomas Gray referred to poetry as thoughts that breathe and words that burn. Robert Frost stated poetry is when an emotion has found its thoughts and the thoughts have found words. William Wordsworth said it is the spontaneous flow of powerful emotions whereas Emily Dickinson believed it is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion. One can believe whatever they want about poetry, but for me, T.S. Eliot described it flawlessly:

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unmade feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."

To put it simply: poetry has the ability to awaken emotions buried deep inside our beings. Whether we chose to acknowledge and delve deeper into those feelings is completely up the individual. However, in my experience, letting those emotions resonate and by listening to what those feelings are saying, I have learned more about the person I am and discovered the music of my soul. By being more in tune with that melody, I am now able to see and appreciate the beautiful wonders of every day living. Life is a miracle and I am blown away every day I open my eyes.

April is National Poetry Month so I thought it would be appropriate to share some of my favorite poems throughout the upcoming weeks. Since there is such a vast array of poets, I will tap into the different eras from E. E. Cummings, Jim Morrison, Buddy Wakefield and so on. For the few people that stumble upon and will actually read this, I hope you find something that speaks to you…just remember to listen.

Moving Forward
 by Rainer Maria Rilke

The deep parts of my life pour onward,

as if the river shores were opening out.

It seems that things are more like me now,

that I can see farther into paintings.

I feel closer to what language can't reach.

With my senses, as with birds, I climb

into the windy heaven, out of the oak,

in the ponds broken off from the sky

my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.