Shopping Bag Tumbleweeds by icon303
Today, my grumbling stomach
Woke me just before sunrise.
I hadn’t been able to eat much
In the last few weeks and
I don’t know if I can today.
Worst of all, the Beast is
Running low on food as well.
First article on my phone
Read: ‘Poetry is Dead.’
I rubbed my eyes and took
A resin hit from the bowl,
Took out my pad and pen,
And started to write to
Combat such depressing things.
Because, here’s the thing:
We’re already living the path
We dream of living already.
We are the Beatnik’s of
Our generation and the
Only thing dying is creativity.
We are already our own Basquiat,
Our own Ginsberg, our own Kerouac.
Do you think that when Kerouac
Got done working in
The strawberry fields and
Was laying in a janky tent at night,
Next to a woman he loved
But knew he had to leave
The next day,
That he thought college students
Would be discussing his work
30, 40, 50 years after
His stomach last grumbled?
Do you think that when Ginsberg
Was writing epic poems of life,
And love, and fear, and
The beauty of it all,
That he was writing it for
The people of 2020?
Do you think that when Basquiat
First took over SAMO
That his paintings and
Street poetry would live
Forever in infamy?
Or were they just living,
And creating, and writing,
And making, because they can’t
Turn it off?
Did their stomachs hurt
Different than ours?
Did they not have the same problems
And live through the same things?
The next time
You can’t pay your bills,
The next time
You feel like dying,
The next time
You feel like giving up,
Grab your pen.
Grab your paint.
Grab your precociousness.
‘Poetry is dead,’
They said, and is
Continually dying…
But here we are;
The last of the poets and artists.
The last of the freethinkers.
The last of the oddballs and outcasts.
And this leaves history
No choice but to discuss us.
And in the same breath
That history can’t speak of
Kerouac without mentioning
Ginsberg, Cassady, and Burroughs,
History will have no choice
But to mention Buynak,
Nolasco, Ligeti, and Smith,
And you, and you, and you,
Right alongside icon303.
Think about that the next time
Your stomach growls echo
In empty kitchen cabinets,
The next time your card declines,
Or the next time your
Car breaks down on the highway;
We are already legends,
We may never live to see it…
But, we are already
Immortal.
