Thursday

by Aaron Young

Oh Wordsworth would you ever tell
(or give some poetic ground)
the secrets of your ebb and swell
to this poor windblown college town?

if consciousness the root of thought
and zen-like should i nature grasp,
then i should leave. O boy, i ought
to leave this cold and sterile class

and stroll across the soggy quad
and drink in draughts of ear and eye
and though my peers may think me odd
i’ll pour libations to the sky.

The jolt of shoes and grind of cars
and redbrick cloud-steeped roofs conspire
to tell us all that is -- is ours,
but do not contain our souls entire.

So then where should our focus fall?
It lights on her? or you? or me?
but consciousness cannot clutch all
of youthful human reverie.

The shepherd ought to sleep in peace
and lonely foal wander away
and give up his cherubic fleece
to fit the fissures of the day,

‘cuz “matter to” and “matter of”
are academically divorced,
and books and thought and life and love
no longer sail the same straight course,

and modern moaning waste land pomes
envision earth in want of rain
and need a sacrificial tome,
a figure bound by shackles, pain --

a text, a man, one concentrate
of blood and longing, crossbound there
upon blind hills, not satiate
with simple sun-wreathed land, aware

of older minds, two-hundred years
before our pens, but still the same,
the ample longings, hopes and fears
and man-stemmed rage and want of blame

this convoluted legecy
(ignore all academic clout)
of politics and poetry
cannot be forced or hammered out

Quotes without Credit

Well, I looked at my watch
I looked at my wrist
Punched myself in the face
With my fist
I took my potatoes
Down to be mashed
Then I made it over
To the million dollar bash

Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than an ashtray. I mean it's obvious to anyone who's ever slept in the back seat of a car that I'm not a schoolteacher.

A man knocks on the door,
I said, "Who is it?"
He said "Freddy"
I said "Freddy who?"
He said "Freddy or not, here I come"

The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plough out again through the side of his head.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Be in love with your life. Something that you feel will find its own form. You're a genius all the time. Believe in the holy contour of life.

Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middle class! Holy
the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

Where there is smoke there is strawberry jello, seldom fire.

??? What is DADAyama ???
DADAyama is to be reached from railroad stations only by a double somersault ... what is history anyway? Is history also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people and seperated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?

The new sensibility -- Baby baby baby where did our love go? -- the new world, submerged so long, invisible, and now arising, slippy, shiny, electric -- Super Scuba-man! -- out of the vinyl deeps.

Raise your swords up high, gentlemen, for the dew will rust them.

With my thumb out, my eyes asleep, my hat turned up an' my head turned on I's driftin' an' learnin' new lessons.

The clouds above us join and seperate,
The breeze in the coutryard leaves and returns.
Life is like that, so why not relax?
Who can stop us from celebrating?

My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.