Poem as Incantative Manifesta

I open with this poem for its Kali-Shakti tension.

NB: All work here is copyrighted. I share it to share it --
not to give it away to people of lesser creative drive
and suspect integrity bent on reincarnation as dung beetles.

(the spacing/format went wonkers, oops, will figure out)

"Beat This"

"What America needs is not a Freedom of Information Act, but a Freedom of Imagination Act." L. Ferlinghetti, "A Coney Island of Lawrence Ferlinghetti," watched 1.6.06 on Comcast On Demand.


You are free to imagine whatever
it is that is
convenient for them for you to imagine.

You are free to marry at 27, birth at 30, divorce at 32.

And should you be single in these ages, you are free
to watch someone else imagine your life
-- shoes, sex, argot --
on behalf of those who think you need a bikini wax.

Free to imagine yourself without adult hair.
But not bald.

I am a difficult woman,
as we have been led to imagine, for my truth, which I imagine,
is out of line with this world. I imagine an economy
that serves humanity, and sex that saves your soul.

You are free to imagine having an imagination.

And what you would do with it
Because it’s just imagination, weak, and ephemeral,
mayflies and revolutionary eros.

They know it.

You are free to wish for an imagination downloads from iTunes.

Wearing your iPod, dance in your underpants
in front of your wife. She will laugh at you.
That would be the point

Do it. Because they take you way too seriously.

Paint your tongue blue with food coloring
and go about your day in the cube as usual.
Play it totally straight.

Do it. Because they take you way too seriously
and you do not take you seriously enough

Imagine what you would do if you had an imagination
that didn’t belong to Miramax or JRR Tolkein or CNN.

Do not imagine what you would do if you were Harry Potter.
That’s parody.

You are free to have the imagination
they will let you have for their sake.

Imagine a new way to make love
While also making breakfast:
so that after warm orgasms
you also have warm omelets.
Cook the omelets last.

You are free to have an imagination

Count the stars one night. Just try. Way out in the dark countryside.
It’s OK to devote one night to the impossible, to get sidetracked by conversation
and pick up where you think you left off until Venus rises again. One night, but not two.

Imagine some less impossible task, and set forth in that same spirit

Put sock puppets on your feet and tell your husband
you miss being a kid, and you hated being a kid,
and your parents really hated you when you were a kid,
and let him tickle your feet until you forget all about it.

Imagine a world without 24hr entertainment. In which I would never have
written this and would have stayed off your back and their backs and would
have gone quietly to bed with my book on Modernism after watching Sex and the City.

Imagine a world with only 4hr entertainment. Would you rest easy at night?
I’m not sure I would.

Where do you want to live?
What do you want to sing?
Who told you not to?
Kiss them, and then slap their ass and skip off

Do you know how to use an ax?
Why not?
Do you know that your hands are perfect?
Why not?

Aren’t you a little feral?

You are free to imagine what you are
trained to imagine.
Or
what you are strong enough for

“The counterculture has been ingested.” LF, following Marcuse.
Imagine you are revolutionary eros in convenient castor oil form