Baby Bop,
Burning Bright
Let's begin with an adventure in prose by Steve Mansour that demonstrates that I am not alone. That's right - there are others who share my artistic sensibilities. Steve is, by the way, an artist/writer who sometimes works at the Street Life Gallery at 2nd and Bell, and not an imaginary person I invented in an effort to fill space. If he had been an imaginary person on this occasion his name would have been Cindy.
Steve writes, "... for me, a true artist thinks and draws, draws and thinks; a true artist thinks and draws, then draws some more and thinks, and draws, and then he thinks some more. A true artist dreams, then draws, then dreams again, and draws, then he/she thinks and again draws, and dreams, and dreams of drawing and draws the dreaming, and thinks less." Can you dig it? I can!
Speaking of digging, I was just talking to my good friend Cindy about the huge blank space at the bottom of this page and she said to me, "You know what you should do? You should write something there. That's what I would do. Then you should lie down, © Dr., `cause you're really looking beat." Just then I thought and dreamed and dreamed the thinking and thought yeah! I am going to have my Beat period. My main influences this morning - now that the bars have closed - will be Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Krebs. Yeah. It's coming to me I'm feeling the beat it's crazy man it's everywhere it's in everything DIG it - dig IT - don't let the Bomb get you down let the Beat do it. Yeah. IT.
I'm outta tea. I send Cindy to the store for more. She comes back. I'm ready:
Sixteenth Hymmnn
to/of the Dumbsainted
or Opus 16, My First Beat Poem
Hey Jack!
I AM a Character in the Bleak
inhuman Loneliness
As I sing the intergalactic song of a
species couchless
Yeah: no couch for me tonight
Pad me on a pad - no hipster pad -
The hipsters pad in their cells tonight -
While I pad the streets of my share
of inhuman loneliness
With: Cindy / she-who-is-not-real
And while I pad this poem of bleak couchlessness
With the aid of: Cindy / she-who-is
Jack: I AM a Genius all the time
As long as Cindy blows through and out my mind.
