When he first came back on the ward, stinking of cement and homeless people's urine and wastepaper greasy mcdonalds frenchfry bags, weaving and bleary uttered and muttering how skyscrapers should never touch the sky because the clouds are bandaids, it's not like when you wipe out on your bike and get a scrape and mom's got the Curads, it's bigger than that, it's piercing God's side, it's making new time through invented darkness and toostraight streets, a new numeric misunderstanding of landterrains, a new always wristwatched time with no memory and ever pulsing press of sweat and blood and new needs, new money to be made new hustles to be had new dreams to be dripped over and frothed toward, a new rabid tomorrow TODAY, and look at those shiny windows going practically to the moon (the what? the moon. Oh, haven't seen it around)--when he first came back on with the greasy bruises and the stink, we hardly knew him. And people started to say it wasn't him, it wasn't the one we drew chalk drawings for, it wasn't the one who didn't teach us anything but that somebody up there on the fourth floor of the library was allowed, was GETTING PAID to say the things he was saying. He was getting away with it, he had hopes in is eyes. But this wasn't him--sorry Doc, got the wrong guy; ours tried to teach us to fly. This guy can barely get out of the chair. Read Visions of Cody, kids. It's the other half of Kerouac's dream. And we better figure out what we're up against, coz it's a killer. I don't think Mudd will every let me back in, but DAMN it was fine while it lasted. See you in the funny papers (or the next time i came a'hainting). Stay moving, see new mexico, in the winter, look at the sky--the stars are everywhere nonsense and two inches in front of you, a blizzard of constellation. Took my breath away. Just don't stop, don't settle, and don't, EVER, stop hoping. Clear-eyed hope, not fearful spineless sheltered cloistering madman at the center of the earth i'll save everyone when i rule the world hope, not political picketing my way or the high way amplified rhetoric buzzsaw divisiontalk it's us or them you're either this side or that side my side will give you strophes and the future hope, but the hope that's balanced, that shakes like tambourine jingles, that sways, and cries, and laughs at itself, and falls in the lagoon! Keep the hope that stays free, and believes you can. Because like our immaterial fleshless unseen friend says, if we can't keep the men of the Constitution and their awful prejudices, we should at least affirm the principle that founded. When I was about 16 (i think) and went on a terrible acid trip thinking that my ex-girlfriend's laughter sound at the hands of her aggressive new boyfriend coming from downstairs were the sounds of our aborted child, the only thing that took me out of my pit was a hug that engulfed me from all my friends intertwined together (some of these friends, it should be noted, had never and were against taking drugs of any kind for themselves). Without judgment, with pure love, I had faith again. It was the only thing that would have saved me then, and you can do some weird, permanent shit when you're tripping. I wanted to thank of all of you who were my intertwined hug for a little while. I appreciate it now, having lost it, more than I knew I could. You were(are? God I hope so) some of the most beautiful people I've ever met. Not to get mushy but it's late and i'm alone in brooklyn, which is no place to be alone when it gets dark inside. |