johnsonboy

Everybody Just Quit


I want to be a motivational speaker
and tell corporate America, quit your job, immediately
I want to carry this message of hope and faith
deep into the heart of Omaha Nebraska via the Overland Trail,
backtrack the Donner party, find them lost in dream,
feed them corn and American beans, walk them back to St. Joe
picking up freight along the way, bending the deep grass
in the direction of the morning star, back to birth even.

I want to implore the builders of tractors and bombs
not to punch in, but to strike their own blow,
call it freedom.

There's no need for a revolution if nobody shows up to work
the grimy rapacious machinery and pump the gas.

I want to say to the General whose name I don't know:
Put down that gun. Put it down slowly and nobody gets hurt.
We can all just walk away.
Just put it down and walk away.

To the Colonel: Now suppose you tell me what this is all about?

I want to be a motivational speaker walking into boardrooms
handing out joints and playing the guitar
and wearing a dress and declaiming loudly the poetry
of beat radical saints who long ago drifted to sea
but not before being affected by the mind-blowing
fact of existence! of being alive! I want to say clearly
love people and use things, not the other way around,
while convincing them to take off the goofy outfits,
the tools of ignorance, and run around naked once and for all
finally getting as intimate after ten years
as any dog would be in five seconds.
Yes I'd tell them to stick their noses in each other's asses.
Form a big ass-sniffing circle and get to know who they're dealing with.

I think a lot of barriers would come down and people would find it difficult
to plot the ruin of others they knew so well.