To the Populist Manifestoer

To the Populist Manifestoer

Time now to open your mouths

with a new open speech…

Where are Whitman’s wild children,

where the great voices speaking out

with a sense of sweetness and sublimity,

where the great new vision,

the great world-view,

the high prophetic song

of the immense earth

and all that sings in it

And our relations to it

                          -Ferlinghetti, “Populist Manifesto”

Time is running out

for this generation

many of us already gone

into regions unseen

and you, Ferlinghetti, yourself

near the end of the road

You spoke those words above

to the poets

calling for the wild children

of the rough bard

with terrible eyes

and buffalo strength

and I for one

answer your call

(and many others have called!)

with the spirit of Whitman

yet other spirit have I also

such as sustains life

in the great encroaching darkness

which you misperceive

as man-inspired and limited

as it ravages across the lands

eating everything sacred and alive

the predators invisibility-cloaked

so all you see is man

though I gather you have tasted potions sufficient

to see in the shaman realms 

and the sorcerers’

and cannot be utterly blind

to forces arrayed against the species

– we just being mopped up

lambs to the slaughter

utterly oblivious to what’s happening!

I’ve had enough of the blind telling me

I’m “seeing things”

meaning I hallucinate the vision

of the Outlaw Christ’s kingdom

withstanding the kingdom of darkness,

both of which kingdoms

you and the others see

so little of

or not at all!

The hour of keening is over too

time now for war

and the only rejoicing

will be from warrior-priests

and priestesses

of the sacred

in humankind

– indeed a nation of priests –

armed so as to contend

effectively

with the juggernaut

casting the shadow of Mordor

invisible to all but the eyes of the Outlaw Seer

(with a strength not of the buffalo

but beyond telling)

and to them he gives his vision to.

There is a kingdom of the priests

of the sacred,

the depths of the human heart

having been purified

of this darkness and evil,

and of that heart we partake

– O heart of our own hearts! – 

as we live in the crucible of purgation

simul iustus et peccator

simultaneously just and sinful

but if you turn your nose up at me

I will cease to cast pearls your way

I care for your soul, O laurelled,

but do not care for your scorn

as it will betray your name

when the shadow crushes you

into that crack between worlds

where you awake in the bardo of the damned

or as we say, in hell

The poets have failed us

the sorcerers have failed us

the seers, the gurus, the masters

the avatars

all have failed us

and your scorn now of the Way

is mingled with the screams of the living

and dead

damned

effete scoffs as the hoof of the Monster

squeezes your neck

and you know

you have failed

us

and your own self,

the charred and cindery globe

of Apokalypse Field

outside the Gates of Eden

bearing witness to the vast failure,

just another voice amid the ruination

wreaked upon us

yet a voice beloved

for its truth-telling

as much as you saw – which was far

more than most

only the unsullied Christ

– the reviled Jesus – 

withstands the furious onslaught

and those in whom his life is,

as we say,

his Spirit indwelling us.

I am not bothered, Ferlinghetti,

by disdain or ridicule

or blithe dismissal

as I am aware

not many will rally to the banner

of the Outlaw Seer.

You need call no more.

The summons is answered.

Though the field be littered

with poets and wasted seers

– O generation of seers and visionaries!

O beloved pilgrims wandering

globe wonderland made hell,

unable to fathom the broken springs

of our beings

darkened at the source

by him who cast Death-spell

within us,

we willing to swallow it.

All our seers and prophets have failed.

There is one voice left.

And He now outlawed.