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Category Archives: Poetry

I Can Feel the Beat (Generation)

It’s all the fault of my literature professors. I fell in love with the beat generation several years ago. I was introduced to people like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and their numerous contemporaries. When I first read “Howl” in my American Literature class, it didn’t really click with me. Then we listened to Ginsberg reading it. It was a lightbulb moment. My entire concept of what poetry was and what it could be was completely inverted. I’d never heard anything with that kind of, well, beat, to it before, and I’d certainly never heard any poetry that was willing to take on the subject matter it did in such a bold fashion. I couldn’t believe it had been published in the 50s, and that was before I learned that Ginsberg stood trial for obscenity for the poem. Not that he was the only author who’d ever faced that kind of censorship. No. Like so many others, Ginsberg was merely ahead of his time. Want to see something amazing? Check out the movie “Howl,” which stars James Franco as Ginsberg, and discusses Ginsberg’s life at the time of his trial.

Some people would say that beat poetry died, or at least was phased out, in the 60s. I would disagree, thanks to the various poetry slams I’ve attended in the last few years, and also thanks to things like Tim Minchin‘s “Storm.” A good friend of mine showed me this the other day, and I can’t help being impressed by the brilliance of the writing and the tone of the poet as he reads it. Looks to me like the Beat Generation is still alive and well.

Dealer

This one is another older piece. My apologies to those of you who have read it before. I’m not trying to bore you. I’m working through some of my backlog of stuff that I’ve been meaning to post. It’s called Dealer.

I am a dealer of the most

Dangerous kind, spreading the thing

That they fear above all else.

I lurk around corners, keeping

Watchful eye on this secret stash.

I’m not particular about who comes

To me for it anyway. I’m not in it

For the money. You don’t even have

To pay. As far as I’m concerned,

Everybody needs this shit. Capital

N.E.E.D.S. They just don’t

Always know it yet. They’ll know soon

Enough, though. Eventually everybody

Comes to me. I could bring the

City to its knees. I could do that.

Or I could do one better. People

Always talk and joke about ruling

The world some day, but they

Can’t do it without what I’m pushing.

Damn, I’m good at what I do.

I can hook you up in person,

Over the telephone, man, I even

Do online orders. Just watch me

Work; I’m a wizard with this shit.

I can work wonders. Just watch me.

You know the best part? You wouldn’t

Believe how easy this is to move.

I carry everywhere I go. I

Can use anywhere and everywhere,

And boy, do I. You can too, once you

Get started. It’s easy to get addicted to,

And while it’s never a good thing to

Get hooked on what you’re pushing,

My supply is unlimited. It’ll never

Run out, and it doesn’t cost me a damn thing.

I love what I do. Life is dangerous, and I

Love to live dangerously. Call it an

Occupational hazard. People like me live

Fiercely and die quickly, but not before fulfilling

Our life’s purpose. So here I am, spreading, expanding

My customer base, as it were. That’s why you’re all

Here, right? Good. Word’s getting out. Someday you will

All be standing where I am tonight. Someday you will

Remind everyone around you of the danger of what you

Do, and the power that you wield. Someday, you will

Join me, as I paraphrase a man, a member of a group of seven

Similarly magnificent men when I say “Mister, I deal in words.”

Books!

“There should be more books. I want to get lost in rows of shelves, filled with books in which I can lose myself. Books are like the pools in C.S. Lewis’ wood between the worlds. Each one is a portal to a new realm limited only by the imagination of the reader. The best part? You don’t need a magic ring to enter one, and any of the characters you find inside stay behind when you close the cover. I love to lose myself in a book. Too often of late that has been difficult. I find that I am surround by distractions that prevent me from straying too far from the printed path. They serve as signposts that I want to avoid. It’s a far better adventure when you don’t know the way. I love the feeling of picking up a book I’ve never heard of but knowing that it is about to pull me in. When I touch the cover of such a book, I feel an inexplicable joy, an almost electric rush, and an urge to drop everything and devour its contents before I can move on. This is a rare joy, but the scarcity of such books makes the finding of one all the more fantastic.

Doubtless, there are those who would call me mad, but never to my face. They would whisper, as so many have done, behind my back, though I would hear nonetheless. It is the nature of a whispered phrase to meander about until it weaves and winds and finds itself within the ears of the one about whom it was first spoken. It is the nature of secrets to be discovered, for riddles to be solved, for the sun to set at day’s end. It is the nature of the world for these things to happen. It was in my nature since birth to crave knowledge, and in my nature to seek it. It was in the nature of my father and mother to guide me to the books in which I could find such information, such wonder. It is in the nature of knowledge that lingers the traces of original sin. So it is that those who would seek knowledge lose their innocence. This is the nature of man. One could say that a library, for all the knowledge it contains, is more sinful than all of the bordellos in all of the world. Conversely, such a library could be considered to be more sacred to those seekers of knowledge than Mecca or Jerusalem or any similar site to her faithful devotees. In the poorest of libraries can one find more wisdom than in the minds of the richest woman or man now living.”

That’s a little something I wrote a few months ago, but finally got typed up. I’m thinking about how it ties in to the character of Rime and his understanding of his own religious beliefs. He begins the novel as a man who is beginning to,  for the first time in his life, consciously question the existence of his god. His brotherhood works in Dhe’skuva, the city on the desert’s edge, selling crops from their garden and spreading the word of the patron deity of the city of Dhe’laza. The people of Dhe’skuva are highly resistant to the visiting prophets, though they have allowed them to live within the city for almost ten years. Rime stays near the temple entrance most of the days, caring for the garden during the day when his brothers are out proselytizing (I love that word). He speaks of his god to any who come near, but the streets near the temple are empty throughout most of the day. It’s almost agonizing to Rime, knowing that his own effectiveness is limited by his location and his physical inability to keep up with the other members of his order. When he’s alone, with nothing but the echo of his own words for company, a little nagging voice keeps popping into his head. “What if you’re wrong? What if he’s not real?” the voice says.

Over the course of the novel, Rime will have to decide how much he’s going to listen to/trust the voice in his head versus what he’s seeing right in front of him. His interactions with Arsus are going to change his life. Landara, Zach, and the others who have yet to tell me their names are going to be a part of a great adventure. The journey to Dhe’laza is going to challenge them all in ways they never thought possible. Long-held beliefs about the characters are going to change. Zachariah (Zee) will be narrating, and at the same time providing some stories for the other members of the cast. As a wandering poet, he will have been accumulating knowledge over the many years of his life. However, he’s got his own personal demons haunting him, maybe more literally than he ever expected. Landara is fleeing her own heavy gambling debt and her past as a city guard, an enforcer of the brutal law that provides Dhe’skuva with its legendary security.

Then there’s Arsus. Arsus has a unique claim that no one can prove or refute. The first character he meets is Rime, and his first statement is that the voice in Rime’s head is full of shit. The voice of doubt should be ignored. Rime’s god is indeed real, Arsus says. Not only that, but he’s standing right in front of him, stripped of all of his powers and trapped in mortal form. Rime’s reaction is exactly what you’d expect from a man who spent his entire life dedicated to the praise and worship of a god who supposedly protects an entire city-state and is among the strongest in the pantheon. Rime hears this stranger’s words and immediately falls to the ground in front of this strange man who claims that he is his god incarnate, closes his eyes, and bursts into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.