though i have yet to fully find it
i believe i have a purpose in life
and it is becoming very clear to me
that that purpose is not to be
a dishwasher or some slave of strife
i feel more pleasure, pride and gratitude
literally starving myself delirious
as a disciple of deprivation than i do
smashing rocks in torturous pits
there is never a real need for profit
dead diamond chains hold us down
in deepest despair of dark delusion
This poem reminds me very
This poem reminds me very much of how I felt, when I entered the workweek world after my time in school had run its course. I started out working on painting roads (center stripes, edge lines, etc), and then became a low-level clerk in a financial firm. I knew that Wallace Stevens had worked for decades busting files for an insurance firm; and that James Dickey wrote advertising copy for a soft-drink company. Paul Claudel had served as assistant consul in one of France's least remarkable consulates in the Far East. Eliot was a numbers analyst for Lloyd's Bank; and Richard Hugo worked as a technical writer at Boeing for twelve years. Stevens was very vocal in his belief that poets should have ordinary, even mundane, job; as poetry, he said, was not a vocation but an avocation. Stevens' example helped me come to terms with a world that was nothing like the school at which I had become too comfortable. Later, having learned the lesson while it could still do me some good, I also learned that one of my favorite Welsh poets had been manager of a small railway depot on a local line, and another was the janitor at an elementary school. I do not mean to sound like I am lecturing you, or telling you what to think or who to read. But your poem reminded me very much of what I could not, at that age, even articulate; and I wish someone had informed me of these facts in a time when I could really have used the information. It would have spared me quite a bit of grief in those early days.
Your purpose in life, I believe, is already in your sight and grasp: to write as you have been writing, to be one of postpoems' finest, and to continue using the language of poetry in your inimitable and literate style.
Starward-Led [in Chrismation, Januarius]
Endless Action
I've been thinking much about escaping everything by slow, steady elimination, to deny the ways of the world today. I fancy myself eventually, when the time is right, drifting away in some untouched sanctuary---meditation in a calm, quiet cave near a freshwater stream where forgetfulness flourishes as the stress of this common existence all dwindles to the point of pure being and inevitably, of course, a death of zero dread.
peace, pot, tequila shot
Jesus loves us, stoned or not
You are certainly not alone
You are certainly not alone in that desire. I think some poets are able to find it in their poetry. I believe that your poetry will provide you that same shelter---when the time is right. I will be sending you a link by PM.
Starward-Led [in Chrismation, Januarius]