by Anne Waldman
Perhaps I’m kidding myself about
the life I lead
Sometimes I feel I’m dying
like a lot of things I see around me
Then I turn on the TV and understand
that everything must still be moving
Music, for example, and I rush outside
around the corner to a concert
It’s so easy
Everything accessible from where I
happen to live at the moment
Things like rock concerts not too many trees on 2nd Avenue
Once, on the Sixth Avenue bus
I got a sudden sensation
I had been alive before
That I was a man at some other time
Traveling
You would think this strange if you were a woman
If I were a man right now I’d be getting out of the draft
but I think I’d want to be a poet too
Which simply means alive, awake and digging everything
Even that which makes me sick and want to die
I don’t really, you know
I just don’t want to be conscious sometimes
because when you’re conscious in the ordinary way
you have to think about yourself a lot
Dull thoughts like what am I doing ?
Uptown in a large crowd I want to sit down and cry
because everything is simple and complicated
all at once
Everyone has this feeling
Even people downtown
It is very basic to the way we are
which is why I can say “we”
A lot of drugs can change you if you want
because you too are made of what drugs are made of
In fact you are just a bundle of drugs
when you come right down to it
I don’t want to go into it
but you’ll see what I mean when you catch on
That’s not meant to sound snotty
I’m open to whatever comes along
This is the feeling I get before I take a plane
Then everything’s the same afterward anyway
All into one space and here I am again
alive still, same worries on my mind
The thing is don’t worry!
You are doing what you have to what you can
You hear from your friends
They let you know what’s happening in California, Iowa
Vermont and other places about the globe
They take you out of your little room
just like the newspapers or the news
or the man you live with
and put you in a much larger room
one in which you are in constant motion around the clock
apoKryptein 