Message From Inside The Box

By John Tischer

You'd think I could write a poem,

since that's what I do, or, should

I say, that's what happens.

Where do they come from?

Haven't been many lately.

Sometimes they come in bunches,

like grapes...what a delight to see

ripe fruit on the vine!

Maybe they come from another 

dimension...maybe they're stored

for lifetimes 'til the right trigger 

is pulled.

I always wrote, I never knew why,

and I was always surprised to see,

like when you're amazed a the

sight in the toilet; to think that that

had just been inside you, that ones

darkest workings are hidden from

sight, function secretly, automatically,

as if part of some cosmic plan.

I've got a question. Did we shop for

these bodies, these particular lives?

Did some look for the new Escalade,

while others wanted an old jalopy they

could refurbish and soup up? Smooth

sailing or a project? Hard to know.

So, yes, I can write, writing happens,

but I wouldn't particularly call this a

poem...this is just words, my friends,

just words I would say to anyone...part

of a conversation I'll never have.

I'm spoiled by words...I make them up,

or combine them in new ways, like

fusion cooking.

People like reading novels, stories...I

can't write them, whether because of 

A.D.D., or, just because my dogma is if

you can't express yourself in a page,

you really have nothing to say.

I wrote for over forty years before I 

thought of myself as a "writer", even,

albeit, (love that word) a mediocre one.

I'm a poet by default because I can't do

the other things I used to any more. Like

all writers, I guess, I enjoy that some 

people like to read me.

Watching Herbert Huncke and Gregory

Corso reminisce about their beat lives, 

lives before they became known and 

admired as significant, their cheerful 

faces and twinkling knowing nods, they

seem to enjoy adoration of young people

that realize they wrote important truths.

They sang at the right time, when America

was fruitful, not fruitless, when the intellect 

still had elbow room to navigate, when joy

seemed like a possible outcome of a new

wave breaking on the shore.

Will I be remembered? Will they is more

pertinent. Will the geniuses of literature

survive the pollution of Orwellian fabricated

minds, survive past an era of moments of

seeming surety?

Even if humanity goes the way of the Dodo,

as long as intelligence is born somewhere,

whether on this world or another, the truth,

the gleaming diamond of inevitable conclusion,

is certain to arise.