Poem Written in a Fresh Luncheonette on February 23, 2012

A lyric may come
Entirely by chance
When the non-language

Brain more fully engages

With its surroundings
Stale is remade fresh again
Even if you're just sitting inside
A luncheonette with your sandwich
Still inside its wrapper

It's the precise quality of Spring
In the air by which we each
May become inspired
Making us responsible to the moment
And more fully engaged with
Life's delicious possibilities

Thus a poem created

In the instant is most purely

Imbued with the life force itself

When the senses best fuse

With everything else

Around us and

As Ego dissipates

Spirit finds its release

Weightless

And ascendant

* * * * * * * * * *

In order to better explain the poem I wrote above and demonstrate my practice (if not my theory) of poetry, in the picture below you can see the poster I was looking at when I sat down to write the poem. That is the same thing you would see on the wall if you were sitting next to me in the Fresh Luncheonette at 30th Street and 7th. Avenue. And the words inscribed on the poster are littered throughout the poem, in fact the whole poem concerns itself with the experience I had sitting there, looking at the poster and writing the poem, about to eat my lunch. This has a dadaist influence, as I love to subject a poem to randomness. Up until now I had imagined composing a poem while walking down the street, leaping from one sign to another for inspiration. I never imagined I could write a whole poem based on one crappy advertisement above the lunch counter. But the practice point remains the same: the goal being to write a poem with the instantaneity of spoken truth as it zips through the brain. Words are the leaves of man, heigh ho.