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.
