General Interest > Let It Bleed

The Genius of The Crowd

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Froderik:
the feeling I get
driving past the railroad yard
(never on purpose but on my way to somewhere)
are the feelings other men have for other things.
I see the tracks and all the boxcars
the tank cars the flat cars
all of them motionless and so many of them
perfectly lined up and not an engine anywhere
(where are all the engines?)
I drive past looking sideways at it all
a wide, still railroad yard
not a human in sight
then I am past the yard
and it wasn't just the romance of it all
that gives me what I get
but something back there nameless
always making me feel better
as some men feel better looking at the open sea
or the mountains or at wild animals
or at a woman
I like those things too
especially the wild animals and the woman
but when I see those lovely old boxcars
with their faded painted lettering
and those flat cars and those fat round tankers
all lined up and waiting
I get quiet inside
I get what other men get from other things
I just feel better and it's good to feel better
whenever you can
not needing a reason.

Froderik:
as the wind breaks in from the sea again
and the land is marred with riot and disorder
be careful with the sabre of choice,
remember
what may have been noble
5 centuries
or even 20 years ago
is now
more often than not
wasted action
your life runs but once,
history has chance after chance
to prove men fools.

be careful, then, I would say,
of any seeming noble
deed
ideal
or action,
be for this country or love or Art,
be not taken by the nearness of the minute
or a beauty or politic
that will wilt like a cut flower;
love, yes, but not as a task of marriage,
and beware bad food and excessive labor;
live in a country, you must,
but love is not an order
either of woman or the land;
take your time; and drink as much as is needed
in order to maintain continuance,
for drink is a form of life
wherein the partaker returns to a new chance
at life; furthermore, I say,
live alone as much as possible;
bear children if it happens
but try not to bear
raising them; engage not in small arguments
of hand or voice
unless the foe seeks the life of your body
or the life of your soul; then,
kill, if necessary; and
when it comes time to die
do not be selfish:
consider it inexpensive
and where you are going:
neither a mark of shame or failure
or a call upon sorrow
as the wind breaks in from the sea
and time goes on
flushing your bones with soft peace.

Froderik:
the most binding labor
is
trying to make it
under a sanctified
banner.
similarity of intention
with others
marks the fool from the
explorer

you can learn this at
any
poolhall, racetrack, bar
university or
jail.

people run from rain but
sit
in bathtubs full of
water.

it is fairly dismal to know that
millions of people are worried about
the hydrogen bomb
yet
they are already
dead.

yet they keep trying to make
women
money
sense.

and finally the Great Bartender will lean forward
white and pure and strong and mystic
to tell you that you've had
enough
just when you feel like
you're getting
started.

Froderik:
one of the problems is
that when most people
sit down to write a poem
they think,
“now I am going to write a
poem”
and then
they go on to write a poem
that
sounds like a poem
or what they think
a poem should sound like.

this is one of their
problems.
of course, there are other
problems:
those writers of poems
that sound like poems
think that they then must
go around
reading them
to other people.

this, they say, is done
for status and recognition
(they are careful
not to mention
vanity
or the need for
instantaneous
approbation
from some
sparse, addled
crowd.)

the best poems
it seems to me
are written out of
an ultimate
need.
and once the poem is
written,
the only need
after that
is to write
another.

and the silence
of the printed page
is the best response
to a finished
work.

in decades past
I once warned
some poet-friends
of mine
about the masturbatory
nature of poetry readings
done just
for the applause of
a handful
of idiots.

“isolate yourself and
do your work and if you
must mix, then do it
with those who
have no interest at all
in what you consider
so
important.”

such anger,
such a self-righteous
response
did I receive then
from my poet-friends
that it seemed to me
that I had exactly
proved my
point.

after that,
we all drifted
apart.

and that solved just
one of my
problems
and I suppose
just one
of theirs.

Froderik:
"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."


"Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help."


"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."


"Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them."


"You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics."


"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."


"If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose."


"Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone."


"Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink."


"Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing."

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