To My Audience (if there is one) An Explanation (if I need one)

The object of my writing has changed in

the last month. A causal factor might be

that I stopped drinking after fifty years, and

stopped smoking pot...both at the same

moment, overnight. How and why this 

happened aren't important here. What is

important is why my focus has changed.

For me now, it's no longer enough to write

abstract or romantic poetry about my 

experience in and of the world. To me, it 

feels like the Sixties all over again, only this

time the world is in an even greater state of

chaos and revolution. I feel the need to 

write about the world as clearly as I can see

it. If there is no one to listen, it goes into the

Akashic record, the universal consciousness,

so, at least, it's on record.

My generation was taught  to think for them-

selves. That's why we protested en masse,

why we were so hard to control. With 

succeeding generations, that has become 

no longer the case. And now, children are 

abused into stupefaction by such things as 

"Common Core", meaning there's not just 

one rotten apple in the barrel anymore.

Now, no one protests that their lives are 

being drained in oh so many ways. 

They watch people fall around them; the

latest mass shooting, (a form of protest?),

the latest suicide, the latest back flip into

the loony bin, and say to themselves:

"Thank God it's not me!"

But, it is "me", it is "you", it is "them"...it is

"us". We are afflicted with the engineered

insanity engulfing us at every turn. Eliot 

was right: this is the way the worked ends;

not with a bang, but with a whimper.

What can we do?

"Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights."

Intention is everything. Win or lose, 

intention carries forward, beyond the myth 

of linear time. If we don't lose our love, our

courage, our hearts, in spite of the odds, 

that energy, that intention, will never be lost,

but will find its time of fruition.

Art is fading, from beauty that informs as 

much as it uplifts and delights, to 

entertainment: just another drug meant to

stupefy and repress, dazzle and bewilder.

Even if I'm not such a great poet, I'm better

than whatever comes out of Hollywood.

me: "What do you think of Tom Cruise as an

actor?"

Marian Seldes: "Oh, I don't think of him as an

actor."

I can't just sit back in Tepoztlan, my 

Casablanca, my protected (for how long?)

paradise, and write nothing about the 

processes taking place in the world today.

I can't not rage against the dying of the light,

even though I  am no Hamlet, nor was meant

to be.

The fewer that listen, the greater the need to

sing and shout, the greater the need to work

it on out. Seeing the problem is the first step

in doing something about it, or at least,

finding a way to escape it. Shake it up, Baby.