When I Was A Boy I Was

I Didn’t Know That Painters And Writers Retired. They’re Like Soldiers – They Just Fade Away.

[in The True Mad North] Of Introspection, Where 'falcons Of The Inner Eye' Dive And Die, Glimpsing In Their Dying Fall, All Life's Memory Of Existence.

I Certainly Was Surprised To Be Named Poet Laureate Of This Far-out City On The Left Side Of The World, And I Gratefully Accept, For As I Told The Mayor, "how Could I Refuse?" I'd Rather Be Poet Laureate Of San Francisco Than Anywhere Because This City Has Always Been A Poetic Center, A Frontier For Free Poetic Life, With Perhaps More Poets And More Poetry Readers Than Any City In The World.

See It Was Like This When We Waltz Into This Place. A Couple Of Papish Cats Is Doing An Aztec Two-step And I Says Dad Let's Cut But Then This Dame Comes Up Behind Me See And Says You And Me Could Really Exist Wow I Says Only The Next Day She Has Bad Teeth And Really Hates Poetry.

This Is All Very Nice, Because The Ideas That Jack And The Beat Generation Stood For Are Needed Today More Than Ever. But I'm Not So Interested In Nostalgia. I'm Interested In The Future.